ComPol Says Police Need Non-Lethal Weapons

During the confrontation that led to Officer Sheldon Arzu shooting escaped detainee Emil Rivers, police tried several times to de-escalate the situation without using lethal force. Today, Commissioner of Police Chester Williams admitted that the officers’ methods were ineffective, noting that using profanity doesn’t help. He also pointed out that PC Arzu had been discharged from the Belize Police Department after a deadly shooting in 2003 and served thirteen years in prison before being reinstated. This incident highlights the urgent need for more non-lethal police equipment. Williams believes that the lack of proper tools has only made the situation worse.

 

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police

“It is our drawn conclusion that there must be more training done with police officers and the Ministry of Health, and in particular, the mental health institution  within Belize to sensitize police officers in terms of how to address issues like these.  We also agreed that we need to look at the weaponry that police officers use in terms of escalating force. When we look at the whole issue of conflicts we look at two, two different stages. We have  the stages of de escalation where you try to  de escalate a tension that exists and when that does not work, then you look at the escalation of force that the security force is going to use. In this particular instance certainly de escalation of the tension was not working.  And so the officers decided that they would escalate the force that they used. But the thing is that they went from words to lethal force, which should not be. You have to have something in between. And so we are looking to see now what we can do to perhaps inject things like pepper spray and teasers. And my fear with pepper spray, as you would know that we used to issue officers with pepper spray. But my thing with it is that when the officers had it, There was an abuse of it. They use it in instances where they don’t need to use it. And then we get a number of complaints. So I banned the pepper spray. We might need to see how we can reintroduce pepper spray with specific instructions and then we’re going to see if we can introduce teasers. I also said to commanders this morning to make sure that they check their armory that they do have the shotgun that we had issued to them before and if they don’t have the bean bags let us know and we’ll provide them with bean bags.”