And while it has been criticized as a crude tool for law enforcement - the compol said it is effective:

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Certainly the SOE has contributed tremendously to law enforcement. You can attest that since the SOE we saw a significant decrease of crime in Belize city particularly gang violence likewise in the Cayo district these were the areas that were being affected by the gang issue and with the SOE we were able to contain that. A number of persons were investigated by this task force that I put together as well as by GI3 and some of those persons who were under the SOE have been charged with murder - I think we solved about 6 murders some were charged with being a member of a gang and some were charged with other offenses like robberies etc. So the SOE also gave the police the ability to conduct a more tedious investigation on some of the past cases and based on that we were able to solve many of them so we are happy where we are now. It's not where we want to be but certainly if you are to compare statistics, despite last month being our best month, our best year since 2005 at the end of August, this year we were one below last year where murders were concerned. So if it's only one....I saw on Sun up this morning the commentators Brandon and Renata they said Compol by one and they laughed but one murder less than last year which was an exceedingly good year is a good achievement for us, we wish, yes that it was far less, but we have to do more, the public needs to do more to work with us and I committed that the police department will continue to build relations with the public to be able to see how together we can end this scourge of crime."