In a society with limited care options for mentally ill persons, the task often falls to the police. And policing the mentally ill or mentally challenged has been a chronic problem for the department.
But what happens when the cops are the ones who provoke, ill-treat or humiliate these persons with diverse abilities, instead of treating them with a bare minimum of decency?
The Belize Association for Persons with Diverse Abilities, issued a release last night demanding justice for the mentally challenged individual who was recently forced to strip by officers mocking him on camera.
The compol also stepped in today to address the matter. Jomarie Lanza has the story.
Stripping a mentally challenged person, humiliating him for his clothing, and then capturing the whole thing inside a police station and circulating the video - enough for it to end up posted on social media. This callous disregard and a lack of policing ethics has incensed the commissioner:
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"I really wonder what goes through the minds of some police officers honestly. And I reach a point at times where I just get tired of answering for the stupidity that they do and it is rather frustrating. As police officers we must ensure that we uphold the rights and dignity of every person regardless of who they are and when we have police officers take advantage of a person with diverse disabilities it does not look good. As Mr Jones said in his interview to the media yesterday we have been doing a lot with the human rights commission we have done a number of training with police officers. Every police officer across the country has been trained in human rights norms. We even got some booklets printed through Dr Coombs. And they were given out to police officers explaining the fundamental rights of people. So when we have things like this it is inexcusable because it is not what we stand for as a department and I have directed that the professional standard branch deal with the matter as swiftly as they possibly can. We must set an example for those officers because we do not want to see a repetition of it. And I must commend the police association because I saw that they put out a statement condemning the behavior as well. and so that speaks volumes to the association and it is good to see that we have people in the association who are not just there to defend their members but to also call out their members when they do wrong and I must commend them for that."
The Belize Association for Persons with Diverse Abilities sees less of a silver lining:
K Raymark Theus, President - BAPDA
"And I was disgusted from the beginning for several reasons, because then I was able to identify that this was a police station. I don't know which one. These are police officers that this person has a mental issue, and these are all things that they know the same way I deduced those facts, they know these things as well and they know what their job entails and what they are supposed to do so what they did if not illegal then definitely immoral and as such there should be consequences for it."
But what disturbs BAPDA most is what they see as a pattern of behavior. Flashback to April of 2020 when a group of officers orchestrated an act so perverse on camera that it outraged and confounded the entire society.
April 9th 2020
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"It is perhaps one of the most disgusting things I have seen. And I cannot imagine what could have possessed those persons who are behind that video to  have done so. It is already bad to force two people into sexual activity against their will. It is five times worse to video record it and ten times worse to share it publicly. Words cannot describe how I feel and when people think that they are outraged and we are not I want to say to them that is far from the truth. The video do outrage us."
Jo
"This isn't the first time that something like this has happened, and it continues to repeat itself. Do you feel that anytime these instances are reported that they take these matters lightly?"
K Raymark Theus, President - BAPDA
"They take them lightly. They posted it, it came from their phone. And then now here we have another incident that I can draw from as well because some of them we actually get that it does not hit the media but now this one is such that in the sanctity of the police station, where the man is supposed to be safe, and to be handled mentally challenged person then what is the protocol there for that? Why did they have to go ahead and record it?"
Theus believes that the pattern of abuse persists because stiffer penalties are not enforced
K Raymark Theus, BAPDA
"For us from BAPDA we are not asking. We are demanding that those officers if not, they be reprimanded, they should even be fired, terminated. if you want to send a message out to these people, so they understand you need to start to terminate. if you cannot connect the way, they think with the money in their pockets then you have lost the battle. There is no connection between the two; they don't care because nothing happens."
We'll keep following the story.
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