Too many guns in the streets - but this morning police destroyed 600 of them that have been in police custody. The senior command of the police was this morning at the Memorial Park where blowtorches and power saws were put to over 600 guns ranging from rifles, handguns and sub machine guns. We were at Memorial Park and spoke to Assistant Commissioner of Police Crispin Jeffries.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
This is the list and these are the over 600 guns that were destroyed at Memorial Park today. Each is numbered, inventoried and cross checked on a list by Chief Magistrate Margaret McKenzie. Some of the guns are junk but some like this 45 or this Beretta pistol or this tech 9 actually worked up until when Assistant Commissioner of Police Crispin Jeffries himself and other workers put a saw and blow torch to them. Jeffries says the guns are what the police have gathered from across the country.
ACP Crispin Jeffries,
"These firearms were confiscated from across the country. They were handed in for destruction from across the country and they are unserviceable in some cases and in other cases some are serviceable. Today's destruction marks the beginning of a series of destructions because this is only a small amount of what we have accumulated over a period of time. We have weapons that we have accumulated over a period of time at the police headquarters. They were handed in, we have an accountability system where if a firearm is evidence in a court case in any part of the country, it eventually ends up at the police headquarters' armory in Belmopan where from there a destruction list is made and from there we dispose of them. There is the belief that some of these firearms were handed in voluntarily and yes, a couple of people in recent months were part of an exchange where firearms were handed in when some persons were suspected of committing crimes and they decided they wanted to appease the situation. In many cases, those persons, we may not have been able to successfully prosecute those persons. So the chance of us getting a firearm off the street was there."
There has not been a public gun destruction in two years. But Jeffries says that it's going to become a regular thing.
ACP Crispin Jeffries,
"We have not been destroying any firearms recently. Firearms, I believe the bulk of firearms we have here have been with us for maybe two to three years since the last destruction."
Gerald Westby,
"If I may comment, we will not do any destruction, every destruction will be done publicly and we want to make this a regular feature. We have informed the Magistrate that we will be doing this regularly because we want to demonstrate transparency."
But more than that, seeing fire set to these firearms and the sight their smoldering embers are welcomed by onlookers, especially those in law enforcement and the judiciary who know that for every gun destroyed, many more remain on the streets as threats to public safety.
The gun destruction is a time consuming and quite tedious task, and it continued form 10:00 this morning until 4:30 this afternoon when everything was taken out on a boat into the sea and dumped.
