And at the end of March, the murder count stood at 27, which is a 40% increase from the same time last year. Today the police department held its Compstat and we asked the ComPol their plans to curb the body count low for 2024.
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Yes we are hoping that we will be able to level off by the end of the second quarter so far for this year, murders are up by 9 compared to last year but when you compare to previous years we are still down, last year was a good. Year so what we need to do now is to ensure that we go to the drawing board, look at the area and in this case, the area of concern is rural Belize district. 9 of the murders in Belize district or in the eastern division occurred in rural Belize so we have to find a way that we would be able to address these types crimes but when we also look at the motives behind these murders, many of them were in the social setting or the domestic setting, the gang violence is still down tremendously and we want to make sure that going further in to the year that we can continue to keep it down. When you look at the overall crime outlook, major crime is down by 22% compared to last year so as much as last year was a good year, we are still seeing that major crime is down this year and we want to make sure that we continue that trend for the rest of the year."
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