Police Corporal Aaron Usher dismissed amid serious allegations

A Police Corporal has been dismissed from the force after reports and allegations surfaced of his involvement with the cartel and the landing of drug planes. Our newsroom received a copy of the dismissal letter, dated today, from the Police Commissioner to Corporal Aaron Usher.  In the 2-page document, the Commissioner noted that the decision for an immediate dismissal was made using his powers under Section 9 of the Police Act, Chapter 138 of the Substantive Laws of Belize, Revised Edition 2020, which states, quote, “A constable or a non-commissioned officer may be discharged by the Commissioner at any time, if, in the opinion of the Commissioner, the rank is unlikely to become or has ceased to become an efficient constable or non-commissioned officer.”  End of quote.  For context, we can tell you that Aaron Usher’s name surfaced when Raheem Usher’s body was found on February 27 in northern Belize.  A note, purportedly left behind by rival cartel elements, had issued threats to several civilians and Officer Usher, insinuating that they were involved in aiding the plane landings.  A few weeks later, Commissioner Williams went on public record to say that efforts are being made to weed out the bad cops from the force.  Here is a clip from that interview on March 11.

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police: “I’m not going to say much on this because I have tasked, Ive put together a team to investigate that whole issue in the north not just the civilians but also the police officers who we’re getting information of are involved and I’ve said this before and I’m going to say it again; the Belize Police Department is not going to shield no police officer who gets entangled with cartels. If you get entangled with cartels the best I can do for you is to second you to Chetumal where you can work with them. But I will not allow for police officers to be entangled with cartels and be working with other police officers who are not involved and when the cartel comes for them they end up injuring innocent police officers. It is extremely risky and so I have said that what we need to do is to investigate, identify those police officers and I don’t think transferring them is going to be helpful to us because if we transfer them they move to other areas and they recruit more police officers. So they will in essence be contaminating more police officers. So my thing is that we identify them and we get rid of them. You can’t be cartel and be police at the same time. You have to decide what you’re going to be. You can only be one. So you either define to be cartel or you decide to be police. The fact that they have decided to be cartels there’s no need or no room for them to be police officers. We have to part ways and that’s the bottom line.”

According to the Commissioner, he had written to Corporal Usher on March 11, giving him an opportunity to indicate why he should not be dismissed.  His attorney, Andrew Bennett, responded on his behalf on March 25.  The contents of that letter, however, was not compelling enough to counter the serious nature of the allegations against him.  Usher had been on the police force for twenty one and a half years.  He has 21 days to appeal the decision to the Belize Advisory Council.