| Now, the last Southside State of Emergency started on March 18th, and finished 30 days later. When it was done, the Police Commissioner Chester Williams wanted that another one would be put into effect at the sound of the first gunshot.
And he has held true to that promise. Belize City had seen no gang murders since April - until last weekend.
This evening, the Commissioner outlined a rapid and no nonsense response to a rising wave of crime:
Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"In the press brief yesterday I made mention to the fact that the spate of violence would be address and would be address swiftly. This morning we launched an operation headed by Mr. Vidal and that operation was to go after those persons we believe are involved in the recent spate of violent crime in Belize City and to some extent across the country, because it is not just about the shootings, but also the robberies we are seeing across the country - those brazen robberies with people carrying firearms and pushing firearms in the faces of people. Those were committed as well by some of the same persons that we targeted this morning."
"In terms of why we decided to going to this state of emergency, the minister has covered most of it, but you all would recall that when we had the previous one in March, when they were release from custody, they were warned and they were told that if it is they decide to start their foolishness again that we will be coming back for them. Even those who did not go up as a part of that previous state of emergency, they too were warned that if they decide to go down that road where they try to hold the masses of our people hostage in this country and particularly in the city that we are not going to sit idle by and tolerate them to believe that they can have their way and so based on that when we saw the robberies, the brazen type of robberies occurring across the country business people complaining of being extorted by gang members and to some extent being threatened that if they don't pay the amount being extorted that they will be killed, then the spate of shootings over the weekend - all of those culminated to get us where we are today."
"Those who continue to demonstrate that criminal propensity and do not want to fall in line, but instead want to be violent hunting or preying on other people, recklessly shooting at women and children, we cannot have those people among us. Their behavior is incompatible with human behavior and as such they do not belong among us and those are the persons that we are after and those are the persons that we are putting away. I want to sound the message that entire south side Belize City is declared as a state of emergency area."
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