To evaluate the department and propose needed changes
The Crooks report, officially "A Review of the Belize Police Department", is a 2008 green paper on the Belize Police Department, and so on policing in Belize, by Jamaican scholar and civil servant Harold Crooks, commissioned by the Ministry of National Security. The 174-page report is an evaluation of its subject matter; for each shortcoming identified, it provides a set of corrective measures, resulting in a sum total of 167 recommended policies for policing reform. The paper was submitted in late 2008, reviewed and mostly accepted by early 2009, and released in full by early 2010. The Crooks report is noted for its frank or critical review, the subsequent ministerial sign-off it received, and the eventual failure of the police department to follow through on its accepted recommendations.
A BPD constable (left) and corporal (right) on crowd control duty for a Carnival parade on Independence Day 2018 in Placencia, Stann CreekThe 1980s rise of gangs prompted the BPD to militarise (noted 2005 example in Belmopan, Cayoshown). This failed to stem the ensuing crime wave, and rather aggravated existing police brutality and unlawful killings, which in turn further entrenched public mistrust of the BPD's competence and integrity.
The Crooks report is very critical of the Belize Police Department's competency as regards implementing the various policing and institutional measures imposed on the department by leadership, partly because these were exceedingly ambitious, and partly because the department had very little in the way of accountability, and very much in the way of corruption. According to University of Quintana Roo scholars Carlos Barrachina and Alejandro Monjaraz, the said measures, as earlier laid out in two departmental white papers (policing plans) for the 2000 to 2005 and 2006 to 2010 periods, respectively, had been "very difficult to achieve" despite being most "necessary". And according to Crooks, by the time of his review, police had met only five of twenty-eight (under 18 percent of) targets set in the earlier policing plan, whilst their progress towards those of the later plan was still "very difficult to measure" at the halfway mark (2008). The Crooks report makes 167 recommendations for policing reform, presented in nine chapters spanning 174 pages.
To Barrachina and Monjaraz, Crooks's recommendations on professionalising the police force are "the most important", as the report itself "clearly indicates the need" to standardise and modernise initial and continuing training in the country's police academy, policing practice in the field, and career advancement within the department. According to Inter-American Development Bank consultants Jennifer Peirce and Alexandre Veyrat-Pontet, the Crooks report showed that the "police force needs to be better equipped and trained and more effectively deployed", and underscored the "added challenges and complexities brought on by transnational crime dynamics, increased drug trafficking, and youth gang dynamics", which the department's traditional (amateur) community policing was "not equipped to overcome". And according to Belize Defence Force lieutenant colonel Raymond Shepherd, the report most significantly identified and recommended a myriad sorely needed improvements to human capital.
According to the aforementioned, the main findings of the Crooks report were: police lack the modern or professional tools, means, conditions, standards or know-how needed in a number of areas; criminal investigations are rudimentary or inadequate; actual or perceived police misconduct is rising; internal affairs is weak or inadequate; and external or internal leadership is poor or inadequate.
Reception
Upon Crooks's presentation of the report in late 2008, News 5 noted that it "blasted the police and should serve as a wake up call for early reform". Home minister Perdomo publicly praised it for its "in depth" and "critical" analysis of the police department, and voiced their intention to support its recommendations. By January 2009, the home ministry had formally accepted most of Crooks's recommendations, and so had directed the police department to implement the approved ones "over the next few years". By 2012 though, 7 News commented that the report now rather "gathered dust on some disused shelf" of the department's headquarters, observing that the promised reforms had not yet materialised "in any tangible way". And by 2013, Peirce and Veyrat-Pontet could not "determine which of its recommendations, if any, were implemented". This apparent failure to follow through on the accepted Crooks recommendations seeminly carried on to the 2020s. In 2021, former home ministry permanent secretary Geoge Lovell noted in the press that "only temporary solutions [in policing reform] have been achieved, and on every occasion, those solutions bring us back to the same environment where crime and violence persist", adding that the ministry had still "not taken advantage" of the Crooks report, nor of later expert reviews of policing or the police department.
Peirce and Veyrat-Pontet called the Crooks report a "strong policy document", noting that it "sets out a clear action plan for reforming" the department. Barrachina and Monjaraz deemed reactions to the report "quite positive", noting that it was (purportedly) adopted as a "foundational document" by the incoming Dean Barrow government, who reorganized the home ministry and appointed a new commissioner of police (Crispin Jeffries Sr) in an effort to actually implement the accepted recommendations. They commended Crooks for compiling "a highly critical report in which he analysed point by point the main problems of the Belize police force", calling his report "an excellent analysis" of the department.
↑In . Shows Belize City (north on right). Plots a random sample of 135 murders from 2005 to 2008 (red), plus the home addresses of involved victims (blue) and offenders (black dots). And in : "Annually between 45% to 50% of all murders [in Belize] are committed in Belize City ... [this map] shows the extremely close proximity between the murder scene and the residence of the victims and murderers. This density makes situational Police interventions, Intelligence Led Policing, CBP [Community Based Policing] and other social programmes potentially more effective".
12In the 2000s, the BPD laid out the measures they intended to adopt to fight crime in two five-year policy papers, termed Policing Plans or policing plans; the earlier plan covered the span from 2000 to 2005, while the later one covered from 2006 to 2010.
↑In . And in , Crooks's main conclusions were: criminal investigations are rudimentary, amateur and lacking; public trust in and thus cooperation with police is declining; data for and practice of investigations, intelligence and forensics is limited, lacking and poor; actual and perceived deliverables are lacking; actual and perceived corruption is growing; complaints against the police (for misconduct) are urgent; the internal affairs office is very small; there is no political will to meet internal modernisation goals; leadership practice is traditional, not proactive, not effective and not adaptive; and respect for human rights in training, operations and management is weak.
↑In . And in , the key challenges identified by Crooks were: technology for investigations is lacking; policing legislation is inadequate; standard operating procedures for investigations and internal affairs is lacking; leadership practice and structures are poor; discipline is lacking; complaints against the police (for misconduct) are rising; there is corruption; and officers' working conditions are poor.
↑In . And in , Crooks's main findings were: quality assurance is weak; follow through on performance indicators is weak; investigations are chronically underdeveloped, increasingly ineffective and not proactive; support and analysis processes for investigations are ineffective; there is little or no collaboration with other agencies; governing ministry leadership is not clear; the means to measure performance are absent; the focus of leadership is on micromanagement, not leadership; the focus of officers' work is on administration, not policing; training in community policing is inadequate; and training in ethical policing and leadership is inadequate.
↑To Barrachina and Monjaraz, Peirce and Veyrat-Pontet, and Shepherd.
↑In . They advised implementating its recommendations, adding that there was "significant scope for building community policing as a central pillar" of the BPD.
