So, to recap, the Police have detained 99 gang members. These are persons who, according to their intelligence gathered, are either involved in some way with the two gang-related murders this weekend in the City, or the plans for retaliation against family members and friends of the deceased men. Finally, some of these detained individuals were picked up because police linked them to the recent spike in crimes such as armed robberies and the extortion of business owners.
The press challenged the police on the possibility that the State of Emergency operations this morning led to the detention of gang members who are trying to stay out of trouble.
Here's what the Commissioner and the Minister of Police had to say about that:
Reporter
"The dragnet still encloses on some of those other people who are fairly innocent or have nothing to do with the flare up over the weekend."
Hon. Michael Peyrefitte, Minister of National Security
"I can assure you that nobody is being dragged into it. If the police are paying you attention it's because the intelligence is saying that you are involved in some way and we want to make sure that you know, if you are involved in criminal activity, that the police is paying attention to you. So yes, if you know you are not involved in anything and you're not involved in anything you don't have to worry about the police. But if you are associated with criminal activity then you need to be really worried."
Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"We will be filtering those persons out like what Mr. Cayetano have said, they may be some who are detained who may not be giving trouble at this time and so they'll go through the interview with the gang task force, CIB and once it is that we are sure that they are not a part of the problem they will be released. I can assure the Belizean people that anybody including any gang member who is not a part of the current problem will not go to prison. That's for sure. In terms of the amount of persons being targeted, we have well over a hundred persons that we are targeting, but not all of them may end up in prison. I am sure that the amount to go to prison this time is going to be less than those at went in the previous state of emergency. So, at the end of the day what we want is to ensure that we go after only those who are the problem at this time."
To recap, this State Of Emergency follows a recently lifted national SOE as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. And before that national SOE, there was another for the Southside in March.
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