In an exclusive interview with Commissioner of Police, Chester Williams, we asked for his crime review of 2021. As was reported earlier this week, there were one hundred and twenty-five murders recorded last year; that's twenty-three more than the 2020 records, with the months of May and June recording the most murders. But, ComPol Williams says that despite the increase in murders, 2021 saw an overall decrease in major crimes.

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

"Overall, major crime for 2021 is lower than major crime for 2020 except in the murder category where we saw an increase where in 2020, we had one hundred and two and in 2021, we had one hundred and twenty-five. So, there is an increase of twenty-three murders when comparing both years. And, like you rightly said, 2021 was an extremely challenging year for us. We had the issue of the gang explosion in the month of May and June that saw a number of murders in those two particular months due to gang retaliations and other factors. We also had a number of what we would call unconventional types of murders emanating from domestic violence where we had a number of double murders in the Cayo District, in particular. Those are things that the police could never prevent due to the domestic nature of them. And in Belize City, we also had the one with the police officers and the daughter who were killed by the boyfriend and then he eventually killed himself. So we had a number of unfortunate situations in 2021. Nonetheless, I still believe that the year was a good year for us considering the challenges that we had - the fact that we lack human resources and other resources to be able to function properly."



Channel 5