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Pedro Cops Have To Say Put
posted (August 5, 2020)
And while those cops may be busy on the traversing border backroads their counterparts on Ambergris Caye are on lockdown. This afternoon we got word that No police officer will be allowed to visit or leave the island the only exception being island officers who were on leave on the mainland, they will be allowed to return to work. It's a safety measure that the Commissioner provided an explanation for earlier today.

Reporter
"Sir, we are getting word that no police officer will be allowed to enter or leave the island of San Pedro for the next 14 days barring officers that were on leave on the mainland and have to return to work. Can you comment?"

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"As a police department we have to be a couple steps ahead. We are the ones who are tasked with the responsibility of enforcing the laws and if it is that we don't put mechanisms in place to protect our officers from contracting the virus and if we have a police department that is so infected then who is going to enforce the law. We don't want to end up like Bahamas where we see a number of police officers are infected, a number of police officers in quarantine and then the military have to be called in to be the police. We are doing what we can to ensure that we do not spread the virus among ourselves. You would know that policing is a family. When a police officer comes from San Pedro to the mainland, he or she interacts with a number of other police officers. So if that one would come infected the possibility of infecting many mainland will be extremely high and then once you infect one mainland that one get in contact with others then the department will be contaminated."

"We already have an issue in Corozal where I can tell you that again, today 12 additional officers were placed in quarantine, resulting from the test results that came out yesterday where 2 other officers were confirmed to have the Covid-19 cases and so the contact tracing for those officers led to another 12 officers going into quarantine. I am happy that out of the 14 swabs done, only 2 were positive yesterday and we are hoping that of those who have been swabbed today that when the results come back, that at least none will be positive. But we are in a situation where if it is that we do not put precautionary measures in place to protect our officers then we may have a department that is so contaminated that we will not be able to enforce the law the way we should."

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