Police Inspector Charged with Obstruction After Altercation at Horse Track

Today, a Police Inspector was taken to court by his colleagues for allegedly obstructing officers from performing their duties. This afternoon, police Sergeant Walton Banner, a resident of Lemonal Village, Belize District was arraigned on charges of obstruction. The 36-year-old reportedly prohibited Special Patrol Unit (SPU) officers from simmering tensions during a brawl on Easter Monday at the Castleton Horse Track in Burrell Boom Village. The responding officers were forced to fire a warning shot to subdue one of the men, Julian Reynolds who wielded a machete and had reportedly injured a man. But the cops were approached by Banner, who was off-duty and dressed in civilian clothing. Banner reportedly aggressed the officers and began using expletives as the officers tried to bring things under control. In court, Banner pleaded not guilty and received bail of $1,000. The cop’s boss Commissioner of Police Chester Williams weighed in on the matter and explained that more persons will be charged for the matter. 

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police: “A number of persons will be charged for varying degree of offenses and one of those persons who have been charged is Sgt. Walton Banner. He was charged for obstructing the police. This resulted from his conduct when police detained those persons who were wanted for a chopping that took place at the horse race on Holy Saturday where he allegedly obstructed the police officers from detaining the suspects from the intervention session we had one Sunday I learned that many of the failures in the area also had to do with policing. Poor level of policing coming from the police officers in the rural area and so as part of the plan moving forward there certainly needs to be an adjustment in the police deployment within Rural Belize. Many of the officers there are from the same villages where these problems are coming from and so they’re too acquainted with the players and are unable to execute their duties the way they should. So we have to address that internally and that is something that I have discussed with Mr.Romero, Mr.Grinage, Mr.Barrow and Mr.Gabourel. Additionally we have also since last week put in place additional patrols in the River Valley area.”

Williams further noted that there is rift among communities in the Belize River Area, which is believed to have sparked the murder of 27-year-old Malcolm Reynolds.  

Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police: “We have the ongoing rivalry in the Belize River Valley area involving three villages or the villagers from three villages that is Bermudian Landing, Lemonal and Double Head Cabbage. A number of persons were detained over the weekend and the police conducted investigation to ascertain the extent of these individuals’ involvement in the ongoing rivalry. Yesterday we also had intervention with the villagers from Lemonal and Double Head Cabbage and during that intervention session a lot of information was shared in respect to what caused the beef and what can be done to resolve the beef. A number of the key players from the Lemonal faction were absent and so we could not have had the intervention in such a way that we believe the matter could be brought to an end. We still see that a number of persons from Lemonal continue to go on social media and are instigating violence. I don’t think that is going to make the situation any better and in some cases we’re seeing where the violence is being pushed by women and in some cases mothers of these young men who are involved in these ongoing feuds. Now as parents I would want to think that you would be more responsible and would try to guide your child or your children to act civil and not to be involved in these types of activities. But when we see that parents are involved to the extent of riling up their children to behave in an uncivil way then it makes you wonder what kind of parent they are. At the end of the day we will do what needs to be done. Over the weekend I got a number of video footage with these brawls at these games and in almost all of these video footages we can see that the group from Lemonal are the aggressors and so we have to look at that very carefully and see what we can do to adequately address the issue to try and bring this feud to an end.”

The police had detained several men following Reynold’s murder but are yet to lay charges on anyone for the homicide.