DEA Assists in Probe of Police Involvement in Drug Plane Landing

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is assisting the police department in their investigation into the possible involvement of two officers in the landing of a suspected drug plane. The United States’ federal agency is working closely with the department into their suspicion of the officers’ involvement. Last Friday’s landing spurred an operation by the Joint Intelligence and Operations Centre (JIOC).  Security forces were deployed after JIOC detected an illicit aircraft entering Belize’s airspace. Burnt remains of the aircraft were later found on the outskirts of the village, but its suspected cargo was not located. Police spent days searching the area and detained two cops believed to have facilitated its landing. This morning, Commissioner of Police Chester Williams provided an update on the investigation and stated that no incriminating evidence has been found linking the officers to the operations.

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police: “I don’t think it’s going to be fair for you to say that we overlooked anything. Like you rightly said those officers were brought in just as we would have done with any ordinary person. They went through the mill. We put together an investigating team of senior investigators to investigate that matter to see if there was anything credible to the information and so far we have not been able to unearth anything to indicate that those officers were involved in that plane landing. Of course yes the investigation remains active. They have also agreed for their devices to be searched, that is going to be done by the DEA agents and again the fact that they agreed to that shows how transparent they want to be with the investigation in terms of cooperating. I’m not going to put the cart ahead of the horse at this time. I believe that we can be judged in terms of what we did. Once we received the information they were brought in, they were interviewed and they remained in custody for forty eight hours like we would have done with any ordinary person so there was no special treatment given to them. At the end of the day we have to be fair to people. If there is nothing to indicate anything further of their involvement then they had to be released from custody while the investigation continues.”

Following the landing of the illicit aircraft the Chairman of Graham Creek Village was detained by police. Williams stated that the local leader is suspected to have been involved based on evidence found in his phone.

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police: “We had received a number of information and based on that again the police, the investigative team again had moved into that area and they had detained two individuals from that area. What we were getting was that they were involved in some respect or some aspect of the plane landing. They were brought in, they were interviewed, I think there was information on one cellphone showing the tree that was cut to the entrance of where the plan had landed which would suggest that he knew of it. Again our interviews in respect of that matter is ongoing. The investigators are still out trying to collect as much as they can to see if we’ll be able to gather a little bit more so that we will be able to charge these people if the evidence should surface.”

The aircraft was the second suspected drug plane to have landed in the south for this year. The first reported incident was on March 2 when the burnt remains of an aircraft was found near our border with Guatemala in the south.