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Now, as we said, police are given broad powers during this time. But, it’s not exactly like the Southside state of emergency where you can be locked up for weeks before seeing a judge.

The enemy this time isn’t the criminal element; it’s a virus and Commissioner Williams outlined the rules of engagement for police:

Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police

“We need to look at the type of business that are going to be open during the non curfew hours and with that then, we need to look at the persons who may want to visit these establishments because by any account, if it is that you want to go to the bank, you should be permitted to go to the bank. If you need to go to the store, you should be permitted to go to the store. There will be nothing wrong for the police to ask you further questions. If you’re saying you’re going to the bank, what are you going to do at the bank? Withdraw? Deposit? Maybe you’re saying you’re going to withdraw, let me see your bank card, to show that you are going to the bank because we don’t want nobody to be running circles around us, to say that they are going to the bank and then they are going to do something else or they’re going to the store and then they are going to do something else. They just use the bank or the store as a reason to be on the street and so, the police will be asking few questions now and then, where they are not sure as to what the person indeed say. Then we need to look at the curfew hours, who are permissible to move within the curfew hours.â€￾

“Now, the Minister of National Security will be signing some special pass, persons who will be allowed to move during that time, but those passes will not come out tonight or tomorrow and so between now and the time the passes come out, I expect that police officers are going to apply their best judgement and if they see for example a stevedore coming from work after 9, they won’t detain him because he’s out on the street after 9, the man is coming from work. You see, maybe a person who lives in Corozal but works in Belize City walking home after 8 because they just came off the bus, you don’t detain the person going home. A person is going to the doctor, they have a medical emergency during the curfew hours, give the person a blind, he needs to do to the doctor. So we must apply our best judgement and while yes I know that there maybe certain instances where police are not going to apply their best judgement, once I am made aware of that, I am going to step in because at the end of the day, we want people to be treated fairly, this not about locking up people for locking up sake.â€￾

“There’s not element of it that allows the police to detain nobody for 14 days. Yes there are certain offences that comes with the regulation, like for example, being out on the street when you’re not supposed to, violating the curfew, being in groups of more than 10 in a public place or not maintaining social distance, yes those are offences that will be covered by the regulation but it does not allow the police to detain you indefinitely or for 14 days and my instructions to my officers is that once you detain anybody for any of those offences, you must charge immediately and grant bail. We do not want to have nobody detained in our station for no extended period of time. Our main objective is keep the cell blocks clean, we don’t want nobody in them. Only if needs be, it must be an extreme case for us to keep somebody in the cell block and we have sanitise some of our cell blocks and are working on sanitising the others but If we need to detain persons, for example, at Queen Street, I think there is about 8 or 9 cell blocks. At Racoon Street, we have 3, we have in Ladyville, we have in Hattieville. We can maintain social distance in a cell block, like for example at Racoon Street, we can have like 4 person per cell, in the smaller cells. In the bigger cells, we can hold about 6 while maintaining social distance but I am hoping Jules, that we won’t have to do that. Like I said, I am asking my Belizean people to see the greater good of what is being advocated for, what we’re trying to achieve, the end state and work with us to ensure that we achieve it.â€￾