And indeed, the events of the past month have had a most damaging effect on public confidence in the Police Department. But, the Commissioner has to be an optimist about it: he says it has helped them to root out long concealed pockets of corruption:
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"We have always been hearing about police officers or member of the security forces involved in these activities and catching them was always difficult. The fact that we are catching them, the police, is good for me, because we are identifying them and we are rooting them out."
Reporter
"Sir, I would say most of the times you catch somebody with these planes, it's almost always a police officer involved. In 2018 there was David Chi along with the police constable. Also in 2018 there was Peter Graham, then we had January with the 3 lawmen that were caught with the plane in Lemonal and then we have these 2 that were here this month. You know that it goes wide and deep in the police department, but do you feel you will be able to weed out all or at least most of them and will the police department be more aggressive in their searches for these men?"
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Certainly, I don't think we will be able to weed out all, but like you said most of them and we are going to employ our best endeavor to find them and weed them out."
"Let me say last night we had 2 and we were out again and one of the two [planes] hovered over the Placencia area for about 3 hours, but we were ready.; I guess they might have smelled the rat and after 3 hours they went and landed in Mexico. So, these are nightly activities for us and the public don't see or get to appreciate the amount that we deterred from landing, it's a lot. While yes, I agree that we do have police officers who are involved, I will also go to say that the intelligence is that there are members of all the security forces involved and we cannot be naive to believe that only police officers are involved and for me recognizing and accepting that police officers are involved it helps me to be able to do my best to find those who are involved and deal with them."
