And while that formula of suppression and intervention has been lauded as the key to the decreasing crime rate, for over a year 7News has been pointing to the migration of gang affiliated persons to the US as asylum seekers. The commissioner has consistently rejected this and downplayed that as any kind of factor.
Last night on Uncut we asked the Caribbean's foremost social violence anthropologist, Dr Herbert Gayle about Belize's murder rate which has been consistently trending down. He said officials must differential between a fall in violence and a violence reduction - even if they keep the answer to themselves:
Dr. Herbert Gayle, Social Anthropologist
"If you have murders going up, you need to know why. If you have murders going down, you need to know why. It doesn't matter which direction homicide is going. The person who is working to reduce it needs to know what is causing any momentum up or down."
"You want to know whether you're having a violence reduction or a falling violence. Mmm, massive difference. Let's say that you have 100 murders and the following year you have 50. All right, but let's say that 20% of your violence produces. Let me just let me choose a state or a place connected to Belize. Let's say that they move to Los Angeles. Let's say out of the, let's say we had 100 people operating and let's say that 50 move to LA."
Jules Vasquez
"And I believe it happened. Right. It actually happened. I'm just saying I have information. Okay, right."
Dr. Herbert Gayle, Social Anthropologist
"Now, if that is the case and let's say you have now a president like Trump, right, who comes in next week, right, week after next week, and he goes, well, I want all of you back."
"Now, if you had had in your head that you were having a violence reduction when what you had was a falling violence and these guys come back, you know have a boom. That you know have to prepare for. What needs to be done when a country sees its murder rate sliding down is it needs to be honest."
"It needs to sit down. It needs to say, what have we done? So it needs research. What have we done to cause this, right? We've done this before. It never gave us this result. What's happening now? All right."
"And if you can answer that truthfully, you don't have to tell the public the truth."
Jules Vasquez
"I think that's the most important thing, we can know, but do not tell them, because they think we're magicians."
Dr. Herbert Gayle, Social Anthropologist
"So now, so now you check to see now your character research."
Gayle has been involved in efforts in Jamaica which saw a 18% decrease in murders last year.
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