And while the Commissioner is receiving facebook praise for swift and decisive actions against gang members, as we told you earlier, he has his detractors. And in the wake of the new Southside state of emergency Cherisse Halsall found a trail of kicked in doors and shaken citizens. Here is that story.
It was between 4:00 and 6:00 this morning when the Police and the GSU unleashed their own brand of violence on the southside of Belize City.
This surveillance video from the home of Doris Grant in the Yabra area shows a mobile pulling up to her front yard and unloading a swarm of officers.
She told us what they did.
Doris Grant, Concerned Resident
"I saw them come in the yard this morning well when I saw the footage of my camera and I saw them go in the front house and I saw one of the police shifting the camera so from there we couldn't see when they entered the front house we only saw when them came to the back and I didn't see them breaking down the door because the camera shifted."
"I wasn't at home yesterday and my house was locked and when I came home this morning as I opened the burglar bars the screen dropped down and I noticed that my door was kicked open and someone came into my house. I noticed that my room doors were broken and the room was ransacked and so I made some calls and I heard my neighbors say that police came here this morning. I don't know what they want or why their looking in my house and if I am not here why would they want to come in and search my house."
"My neighbor told me that they were looking for Wani and I told them that he doesn't live here he lives upstairs so why didn't they go upstairs and look for him."
Doris lives in Port Loyola but her's was far from the only neighborhood that the cops terrorized this morning.
Anna Franklin, Concerned Resident
"I heard Bam, bam, bam, at the door so I was right at the door. So when I opened the door I then asked who is it? They said dah efing police with the big bad word, three GSU they said it's efing police open the efing door right now. So I told them open the door but I told them how could I open it when you jammed the door. So by the time I opened it they said who and you efing deh in yah and by the time I opened it I said officer I'm sick. I said I'm the only one in my house because I'm sick and I'm not going to work, how could you break up my place like this? So he said we need to search the house and I said I don't have any problem with you searching the house. That's what I explained to them. So he said open the efing back door."
"So I told him really who will fix my door and I am to the street. I told him who really will fix the door and this is to the streetside I told him mein this is really out of order because I'm a single parent and I've been sick for 7 months and for you all to come and destroy my place like this. This really terrible I said it's sad and he said we aren't **efing** fix no door that's what he responded with the bad word. He said because we got rules from Chester that we aren't supposed to fix any door."
This woman was still too wary to go on camera but showed us how police had forced her door open before sticking a gun in her face.
Concerned Resident
"It was really traumatizing because for you to wake up early in the morning with a gun in your face and you've just come out of your bed and you meet your door open with police in your house without you opening the door that's a really bad experience for anybody. Me as a young mother and a single mother. It's hard and it's rough."
"And my baby bawled, and he bawled until he went back to sleep. Four o clock this morning the GSU came without manners."
"And then I was like officer no gang man lives here and no man lives here, just females, Who there, Who there and they didn't care what I had to say and they walked straight in and knocked down the door."
It was the same thing over on Wagner's Lanew known as Jump Street where one young woman told us that police were on a rampage forcing open multiple doors and doing costly damage:
Kia Hyde, Concerned Resident
"This morning we were laying down after five. We were asleep when they woke my sister up. My uncle was downstairs laying down and they told him to open the door so he told them right now. And they were ready to stamp down my uncle's door. So they went upstairs to my brother and when they went up there no one was up there and they broke down all the locks from all of the doors. The whole door that can't be locked you'd have to place cement back over on it."
Reporter
"How much you think it will cost to fix all of this?"
Kia Hyde, Concerned Resident
"I don't know but money. I think they were looking for them for that thing where they were supposed to take them back up again but they didn't have any rights to go and knock down the locks off of the door. They're messing with people's privacy. It's not the first time it's all the time and whenever they come they never come respectfully. They always come like their dogs and like it's dogs they're dealing with. I stayed right in my house, I didn't even go upstairs at my brother until they went. I know it would be problem if I stepped out of my house. Any time they come they always want to take me for a 24 or 48 for nothing."
Email
Print