| ComPol Chester Will Leave With Lavish Luncheon |
| Tue, April 15, 2025 |
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Tonight there are new details of Commissioner of Police Chester Williams's well publicized move to the Ministry of Transport. His slo-mo sendoff will culminate in what we can only conclude is a lavish luncheon. 7News has received a text message sent - to commanders by a Senior Superintendent saying that after the Monday May 5th Commanders' meeting there will be a luncheon for the outgoing compol - which we know is standard for retiring senior officers. But - this is the fun part - quote, "Precinct Commanders are to bring a gift each for Mr. Chester Williams. FO (financial officer) has authorized $800.00 each to be used to buy his gift." To be clear, this money is coming from public funds.
And while that message was sent to "division 2 commanders" in Belize City - we note that there are about 20 commanders in Eastern Division alone. And the May 5th meeting will be a meeting of countrywide commanders. If all of them bring a gift -that's about 36 multiplied by $800 dollars each! That's a possible 28,000 dollar haul of gifts - all of it paid for from the public purse.
We did speak to the incoming Commissioner Dr. Richard Rosado about it this evening and he said he knew nothing about it - and told us that neither of the Financial officers in the city or Belmopan had originated that message. But, we have seen the message and know it's real. Rosado told us he will address it.
Commissioner Williams called us just before the news to confirm that the luncheon is standard for retiring senior officers and that so are gifts. He says he always urges his officers to get the gifts given as a donation. He said he turned down the offer of a lavish farewell party.
Compol Chester wasn't happy with our story about his big sendoff luncheon. He says we have the number of commanders giving those 800 dollar gifts wrong. He says those gifts will come from only the four precinct commanders - not from all 30 plus national commanders. We note that he had no objection to the FO getting the monies for those gifts from public police funds.
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