In yesterday's late evening press conference the COMPOL was asked about the murder rate for 2022.

It's a question he was only too pleased to answer as 2022 may end up being the first year in many when Belize doesn't make the global top 10 in murders per capita. Here's more:

Cherisse Halsall:
"Sir, we want to ask about the murder rate this year, it seems like we are actually going to be number 6 which is a lot lower than we have ever been. Still, citizen security is an issue and right now three men remain missing, What are your comments about that?"

Chester Williams, Commissioner Of Police
"Well, again there is a lot that we continue to do to address the issue of crime, we are not going to say that we have the answer to everything but under Minister Musa, we have established the multi-sectoral approach to fighting crime which encompasses the LIU component. So while we do have the law enforcement aspect where police officers go out and conduct raids based on intelligence, we conduct preventative patrols. We conduct checkpoints, we conduct highway patrols and these sort of. Things to prevent crime from occurring. We also have the multi-sectoral approach where we get all the stakeholders to come to the table and to play their role in respect to the response to crime to try and address the crime issue from the root causes and we have the LIU that would then come into place when we get information that they may be any issue brewing between any rivalling groups or individuals. And we are finding that the way are going now with the dual component is certainly working. As much as I've heard the leader of the opposition say that Minister Musa has failed because crime is up, I would like to say to him that so far the two most effective Ministers I have worked with when it comes to addressing. Crime is Mr Peyrifitte for the time that he was Minister and Minister Musa and if you were to look at the country's murder rate per capita, you would see that it is actually the best we have had in over thirteen years under Minister Musa."

"We are out of the global top 10 so how can. You justify that this minister under who the crime trend is certainly going down has failed and when the others were there that were aligned with your party and we were above 30 murders per capita annually to you they were successful and the one who has left it below thirty is unsuccessful, I question what the leader of the opposition would regard as being successful."

The COMPOL also shared the murder rates of the last four years being 113 murders or 25 per hundred thousand residents in 2022, 125 murders or 29.1 per hundred thousand residents in 2021, 102 murders or 24.3 per hundred thousand residents in 2020, and 144 murders or 32.8 hundred thousand residents in 2019.

Channel 7