In the past month, news of drug planes and cartel cops have dominated the headlines. Five cops have been charged with conspiracy to land a plane, and another has been slapped with ammunition charges. It got to the point where the Commissioner of Police admitted that there are a number of officers within the department who have been compromised and he made a public plea for them to stop.
But the prime minister seems to think he's exaggerating. PM Briceno told the media today that he doesn't think the cartels have really penetrated the police department and believes that the narcos are local ones. He also implied that "high officials" who were in power before his administration had set up a network that they are now trying to break down.
Hon. John Briceno - Prime Minister
"You know sometimes in Belize we use the word cartels loosely that even within Belize we have our local cartels and probably from the looks of it, a lot of it is seems are Belizeans that have contact with other cartels at least from what I've been seeing but I'm not expert and I'm sure that the commissioner has more information than I have. It seems mostly locals that are organizing these things and they are paid a fee to assist them to move on forward."
Reporter
"In January 2020 when you were in opposition, you told me that the drug planes are landing because high government officials were allowing these drug planes to land. The drug planes continue to land."
Hon. John Briceno
"I didn't say it's because of only that. Obviously they have set up a network, so what we have to do now is break up that network. We've already caught a number of police officers that were in key positions that were allowing some of that to happen and we got another one with this last plane landing, so it's a matter now of following the money to where it ends, where the drugs end and go after the people, who ever else is involved and certainly now with the police department we have to take a hard look as to what is happening there and what changes we can make, whatever changes that needs to be done, we will make it because we have to do everything we possibly can to be able to stop the landing of planes in this country."
