Police Urged to Limit Press Access to Commissioner

The Belize Police Department is being advised to limit the media’s access to the Police Commissioner.  This is one of several recommendations that a media consultant provided to the department.  The streamlining of the relationship between the media and the Police was found out when our newsroom realized that we were no longer allowed to give feedback or present questions in the Media Police WhatsApp Group.  The News Directors of the four major media houses took to Raccoon Street Police Station where the Minister and the Police Commissioner were doing a tour.  We were allowed to ventilate our concerns and subsequently informed of the consultant’s recommendations.

Dr. Richard Rosado, Commissioner of Police: “We did had a session with a media consultant, a two day media consultant to advise us how we can improve the relationship with the media and with the public. And the person basically volunteered herself to assist us. Our media blog has a total of 40 media houses, 64 individuals. The intent basically was to verify who are the legitimate media houses and for us to establish that open communication with them. I must admit in hindsight we should have consulted and brought even all the 40 media houses together. Three of the recommendations I thought was valid for us that we could have acted on was the one in terms of determining who are the legitimate media houses because for sure there are not 40 legitimate media houses. The other was for us to basically continue with the weekly media press brief and for us to be able to have a press officer who will deal with all the incidents of crime and addressing it to the media. We also spoke about having our own media talk show on the social media to promote what the police department has been doing. We also talked about having a monthly session with the media houses to highlight what the police department has been doing and also a quarterly press brief. So there are many things that we discussed in terms of improving the relationship with the media and the public.”

Shortly after the meeting, the WhatsApp group was reopened for the media.  As for the rest of the recommendations, it is unclear whether the department will execute them.