Crime on the rise

On Saturday April, 2^nd we learnt of four murders that had taken place within 24 hours. Never before had such a thing happened in our little Country of Belize. Crime had rocketed to an all-time high.  Two of the murder victims were Chinese women who had seemingly been killed for no apparent reason. Their deaths seemed to be as a result of a gang war involving the police and gangs.

The first of the two murdered women was 32 year old Yan Ying Chen, who was in her grilled store on King Street near its corner with Euphrates Avenue when she was shot to her shoulder and back. She died shortly later at the hospital. At approximately an hour and a half after that on Faber's Road, 37 year old Fei Lan Wu, was shot in the lower back and died three hours later while undergoing surgery at the hospital. She too was behind her grilled store. Robbery however, was not the motive for these killings.

Crime in Belize is at its all-time high. It has been escalating more and more over the years. Crime is a situation that can and will never be non-existent it however, can be reduced. There has been many attempts to lower the inflating levels of crime worldwide; attempts such as setting curfews, establishing programs and awareness campaigns.  In an effort to help the situation of crime, I recommend that the government enforce some grave and serious laws to punish those committing crime.  There should be more patrols and sub-stations put in place so that police are readily available to intercept or intervene in any crime act being committed as quickly as possible. I believe that we should go back to the death penalty to show murderers that it is not at all acceptable to go about taking the lives of innocent people.