PM Briceño Weighs in On State of Belize Police Department

We also asked Prime Minister John Briceño to weigh in on the current state of the Belize Police Department. There were no mentions of any reforms to the department in his State of the Nation address. Considering the recent death of twenty-six-year-old Daniel Cal and other reports of alleged police abuse, PM Briceño was asked for his thoughts on ways in which the department can improve its service to the nation. Here is how he responded.

 

Prime Minister John Briceño

“It is important for me to put on record, the tremendous work that minister Musa has been doing. If you don’t know, over a hundred police have been interdicted or fired for whenever there is any feeling of misconduct, or their behaviors are unbecoming of a police officer. So, he is trying his utmost best and so has the commissioner of police. We have been doing a lot of training. We also added a lot of counseling to these police men and women because they are under tremendous stress when they are out in the streets. I have seen it before…When you are at a party or out drinking and they are trying to break a fight and people are hitting them in the back. They are humans and whenever they would respond, somebody would say, oh police brutality. Not suggesting it does not happen. I am just trying to explain the environment which police officers work in. I think we need to look at where we were and where we are today. Do we have more to do? A lot more, a lot more training has to be done. We have to work on changing the culture of the police department. On this issue you mentioned, it is very unfortunate. Quite likely in insight you have twenty, twenty vision. Somebody should have contacted the family to say, hey something is wrong. I am told they have taken out the report to show that while he had some bruises he died from, it seems he was an alcohol and other medial issues and not necessarily from police brutality. But one it to a prisoner is one too much. It should not be tolerated.”