Police Face Challenges in Anti-Narcotics Efforts: Commissioner Addresses Hostile Villages

Police continue to grapple with the issue of narco-trafficking and Commissioner Chester Williams says that the fight is being made more difficult by certain villages that are aligned with the traffickers. Speaking on a destroyed drug plane that was discovered in the Toledo District on Sunday, Williams said that some villages in Toledo have decided to be hostile to police.

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police: “The truth is in some of the villages in the Toledo district the residents are very hostile to the police and we do believe that some of them are working with these narco traffickers and again we have a basic idea who these people are, who are behind these things and we are constantly targeting them. As a matter of fact last week the police we got information of an air strip in a particular area down south and we responded and upon reaching there we found spikes and gallons that we believe that were going to be used to land a plane in that particular area so I believe that was one that we averted due to the fact that we got pre intelligence on it. So occasionally we get these information but there are some areas where the village residents are extremely hostile to give the police information.”

The drug plane was detected by authorities on Friday night, but it disappeared off the radar. The Belize Defense Force conducted a flyover on Sunday and found its burnt remains in the Corazon Creek area, surrounded by dense jungle. Williams says that police believe the illicit cargo from the plane was transported over to Guatemala.