Earlier in the news, we told you about what the commissioner called a police "overreaction". That incident involved an American tourist who was perhaps wrongly arrested, but treated with absolute decorum.
But that wasn't the case in another of the weekend's arrests caught on camera. This time a man who was reportedly under the influence was put in a chokehold by his arresting officer.
The chokehold and it's usage by authorities has been widely despised since the May 2020 death of American George Floyd. And today the Commissioner told us that since then it's been off the table as a method of detention in Belize. But this morning he also wondered out loud if prior to that video this man hadn't done something that warranted that treatment.
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Yes, I did saw a video last night again on social media, an officer who was holding a person in a chokehold again I listened to the voices in the video and I heard people saying that those who were recording chose to record at a certain point but they did not record what took place and it goes to what the Minister has said to us that people tend to record what they want to record or if they record an entire incident they splice it and release what they want the public to see
and so from the voices in that video it's obvious that the young man may have done something wrong that causes the police to have reacted the way they did. Now I'm not going to justify the actions of the officer in terms of putting the person in a chokehold, following the George Floyd incident in the U.S. we created our own internal policy to no longer use the chokehold as a method to be able to restrain a person and so the officer in question would have been violating our internal policy and for that, I have directed PSB to look at it but at the end of the day we have to be reasonable and I don't think that it's something that warrants but rather to give him some sort of reprimand and we need to understand that that kind of behaviors is not going to be countenanced."
The Commissioner also cautioned the public not to be too judgemental telling us that what the video didn't show was the arrested's disorderly behavior and the manner in which he resisted the effort of the officers to put him into their mobile.
