7 News Belize

COMPOL Says Nigel’s Crowd Was Against SOE Regs.
posted (May 18, 2020)
And while Petillo was charged for a mask violation, the commissioner of police says he could have been charged for a whole lot more.

This afternoon, Police Commissioner Chester Williams appeared on "Ask the Experts".

He discussed the mass gathering in Cotton Tree spearheaded by Petillo and said Petillo and the other organizers lured attendants to his public meeting into a situation where they violated social distancing and State of Emergency rules:

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"We are seeing that people are doing things that is still forbidden by the regulations. Let's look for example what happened over the weekend in Camalote Village where we saw a huge number of persons gathered under the guise of getting land. I don't know if the land minister was there, or we have a new minister of lands, I don't know, but the gathering was outright illegal. If you go into the regulations in section 5, it speaks to the restriction of movements during the time of the state of emergency. It is saying that if you are not moving for one of the reasons stipulated in the regulation, then your movement should be restricted. If you are not moving to go and get service from one of the authorized business within the regulation then you'll be moving outside of the allowed purposes and so what we saw over the weekend in Cotton Tree was an outright case of a number of persons who were gathering illegally and they all breached the state of emergency regulation, notwithstanding that we are still trying to see how best we can be reasonable with people, because as much as we have video footages that showed us exactly who were out there and we can proceed against them, we believe that these persons for the most part because they were invited to be there ny one or two individuals and so we are only dealing with the persons who caused them to be out there instead of dealing with the whole crowd."

Dorian Pakeman, Host
"I was going to ask that. I know the organizer has been charged. You could look at the video footage and technically everybody was there can be charged."

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Yes they can and again, this is what I want people to understand, it is not that the police want any confrontation with anybody. I don't think this is the time for us to be having any confrontation. I believe this is time for us to unite as a people. We all need to do our part to ensure that we prevent or stop the continuous spread of the virus in our country. What happened out there puts a number of persons at risk. Can you imagine if one person was out there and that person had the virus, how so many persons could have been infected, because when you look at the video footage, people were not even practicing social distance, some people were not wearing masks, so all of thse are things tyhat could have csued the virus to spread and to me it was reckless and to see that what was being said that it is getting land for poor people. I look at some of the persons in the video footage, these are not poor people. The least they could have done is to wait for this pandemic to be over and then try to see how is it that they can try to acquire whatever piece of land that they want."

"The land from what I am told is private and if it is that the owner have not paid taxes for a number of years, that still do not give them the authority to go in and believe that they can strong the land. There is again process by law that would allow the state, if it is that the person have not paid land tax for a number of years, for the state to acquire that land, but it goes through a process. So they could have brought it to the attention of the state and say you know what this land is owned by so and so and they have not paid land tax, the state do its due diligence and if found that was the case then you write the person, because you have to give the person due process, write the person, explain to the person that they have not paid land tax for a number of years and they are being given so much time to pay the land tax. If they don't pay the land tax, the land will be repossessed by government."

Home | Archives | Downloads/Podcasts | Advertise | Contact Us

7 News Belize