And while the police have one man in custody and are searching for his brother, they’re also doing their best to convincing the wider community, shaken from the unprecedented attack – that they’ve got stuff, “under control.” But while the public worries about how many other grenades may be out there, today police destroyed a variety of firearms. Jacqueline Godwin has more on this and the effort to maintain a heightened police presence on the streets.
Jacqueline Godwin Reporting,
The destruction of firearms not only highlighted one of law enforcement’s efforts to combat crime but the display also showed that it is not only small firearms that are now in the hands of criminals.
ACP Allan Whylie, Officer in Charge – Eastern Division
“Each and every time we do destructions we have the assortment including assault rifles, AK47s, AR15s, and those sorts of things. In this case we have also destroyed I believe two rocket launchers. So it shows you that the weapons are out there, our borders are porous because we do not manufacture firearms in Belize and we need to see how we can better collaborate with the other border agencies and the other government departments, Customs, Immigrations, and so on to improve upon the intelligence gathering so that we could be more preventative as well as proactive and of course improve our operational and interdicted approach.”
One thing we do know is that thirteen hand guns, thirty two rifles, thirty
seven shotguns, five machine guns, two rocket launchers and pellet guns will never be used again to kill, injure or rob. All were blow torched and destroyed at the Queen Street Police Station. Most of the weapons were confiscated in Belize City.
But four days ago it was not a trigger pulled that resulted in one of the bloodiest attack in our history of crime. For the first time a grenade thrown was deliberately used in an attack on one of urban city neighbourhood, Mayflower Street. Officer in charge of Eastern Division Assistant Commissioner of Police Allen Whylie says the incident demonstrates just how confiscated the criminals have become.
The grenade killed sixteen year old Darren Trapp and injured eleven. No one as yet has been arrested. Only one person is detained.
ACP Allan Whylie,
“At this time he has been classified as just a suspect, we continue
to have officers visiting the victims as well as canvassing the area for their continued cooperation. There is one other person of interest that we’re seeking and hopefully when we find that other person, we’ll be able to advance our case in terms of where we go.”
One move the police have made is to increase their presence between two neighborhoods to prevent any retaliation to Sunday’s night’s explosion.
ACP Allan Whylie,
“We are out there twenty four hours a day. We’ve tried to increase the visibility of the police, especially in the Mayflower Areas and the St. Martin’s Deporres areas. We’ve kind of reduced the distance of our foot patrol and the Vernon Street area has to be covered to ensure that there is always that visible presence right in the vicinity of Mayflower. We’ve created a number of covert observation areas where we believe persons may want to come from or may want to target and we continue to monitor that. We continue to work along with CYDP, going into these areas to try to seek information as well as to try prevent any thing from happening. But we know we can’t be everywhere at every time and we cannot stop everything but we’ve ensured that we have sufficient numbers to get in if something does occur.”
While police preliminary investigations reveal that the grenade incident was the result of an ongoing rivalry between a group of young men from the St. Martin de Porres area and the Bailar area what is also referred to as Ghost Town, ACP Whylie says new information suggests more players may be involved.
ACP Allan Whylie,
“We must understand that these groups have friends and associates and affiliations and so I think it has moved beyond just the two initial groups because there are other persons who have been visiting the areas. We’ve seen them in the areas and we do know they are associates. So again we continue to monitor the situation.”
And while Whylie spoke about increased patrols, when we visited this afternoon, we didn’t find any.
