Last night, a cell phone video went viral on Facebook, which depicted several heavily armed police officers pulling over an ambulance - their weapons trained on the vehicle, and their mobile blocking one lane of the George Price Highway.
Inside, we heard the the panicked female recording the scene - saying that her mother was dying. Belizeans were ready to believe the worst. It appeared that once again, police were caught on camera harassing civilians.
But tonight, police say that those first impressions of the situation were very wrong. Commissioner Chester Williams has given a detailed account of the situation, which we will share with you, but first, here's the backstory. This ambulance belongs to a private company with its headquarters near the Hopkins Junction. It was transporting a medical patient from Independence. But, the cops received a tip that the driver was being held hostage by weapons and drug smugglers who were using the ambulance to transport guns and drugs from the Stann Creek District to the Belize District.
The cops tried to verify their information by stopping the ambulance, but the driver blew through 2 checkpoints on the way between the two districts. In both instances, the driver almost ran over the officers manning the checkpoints, and so, that caused the cops to believe that he was in distress. It turns out, he simply didn't want to concede to the police's authority, and that's why he refused to stop. But his recklessness behind the driving wheel only deepened the worry from the cops that he was being held at gunpoint. Here is the Police Commissioner's detailed explanation of the drama surrounding this emergency ambulance vehicle:
Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"Yesterday was a very peculiar [set of] circumstances, where the police had received information that the driver of the ambulance was being held at gunpoint, and being forced to transport drugs and guns from Stann Creek to Belize City. With that information, the checkpoint on Hummingbird Highway, just outside of Belmopan was alerted. A few minutes an ambulance bearing Stann Creek license plates approached the checkpoint. The police stopped the ambulance, and upon attempting to question the driver, to ensure that he was okay, and to check the ambulance, the driver sped off, almost hitting the officers who were at the checkpoint. We immediately contacted Southern Regional Hospital and inquired from them if, in fact, an ambulance had departed that hospital, and what would have been the destination. Southern Regional's response was that their ambulance did not go anywhere."
"So, that coupled with the behavior of the driver, really and truly gave more credence to the information received. Why would the ambulance driver just speed off, when being questioned by police. And so, the other checkpoint on George Price Highway outside of Belmopan was alerted, and they were prepared for the ambulance. When the ambulance arrived there again, the officers attempted to stop the ambulance, and the ambulance drove right through the police. The police officers had to dash off the road to avoid being hit by the ambulance. Now, that is not the normal behavior of an ambulance driver. We have been working with BERT, which is another private institution."
"So, again, with the driver just bolting through the checkpoint, a second checkpoint, it really and truly made the information more believable."
"Instructions were given to the Hattieville checkpoint to boost up the man-power, and to be fully prepared to ensure that the ambulance is brought to a stop because we now believe that the driver is being held hostage in this van. He's being forced to go a certain way, and we now see saving his life as a matter of urgency. And so, when the ambulance arrived at the Hattieville checkpoint, the officers placed the police vehicle across the road to prevent it from doing what it did at the two previous checkpoints. So, that brought the ambulance to a stop. The officers, as you can see in the video, were very professional. I don't think one would have expected that the officers would have approached the ambulance with their guns in the holster, their hands to their sides when we got information that this man was being held a gunpoint by gunmen."
"And upon checking, and seeing that there was a patient in the ambulance, the officers immediately released the ambulance to go about its business. The ambulance didn't even take 30 seconds at the checkpoint."
"To see the reaction of some people toward the police and what the police did is rather appalling."
"Let's say the information was true, and this ambulance would have passed through 3 checkpoints, and the police did nothing, and the driver would have later on been found dead somewhere in the ambulance. What would have been the talking point? The man and the ambulance passed through the checkpoints, and the police did nothing, and now he's dead. We would have been blamed for his murder. We did what we could have done in the circumstances, with the information that we had."
The commissioner is also expecting the company which owns the ambulance to give police a full, written apology. From the police's perspective, this driver had no reason for endangering the lives of the cops, and the commissioner said that his company doesn't apologize, they will charge him for the incident:
Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"We are trying contact the operators of that ambulance because the truth is we need an apology from them, and if we don't get that written apology - and it must be public - then we're going to bring charges against the driver for attempting to knock down the police officers at the two checkpoints. What he did is a criminal act, and while yes, we understand the urgency of his travel, that is no justification to run through police officers at a checkpoint."
"If you listen to the driver in the video, he was very disrespectful, and again, I can say that the officers were very professional in not following him up. After he had dropped off the patient and he went back to Hopkins, we communicated with him with a view to getting an explanation from him. He made it outrightly clear that he is not going to speak to us, that he doesn't need to answer any questions from the police. So, the driver has a stinking attitude, and these are things that cannot be countenanced because he cannot believe that because he is an ambulance driver, he can break the law, and [it] must go unpunished. It cannot work."
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