And the sone of latest murder victim Ben Hyde Senior was on 7News earlier this week saying the cops are victimizing the victims - by not allowing him and his family to grieve but constantly harassing them with searches, threats of arrest, and worse.
Well, yesterday the Commissioner of Police Chester William was not impressed, yesterday you saw his agitated response to the complaints made by Rocky Road gang boss Christy Hyde.
The gist of it was that he commanded Hyde to behave or face the wrath of the police.
This morning we put Hyde's comments to Minister of Home Affairs Kareem Musa and while he had a similar response he was a bit more sympathetic.
Cherisse Halsall
"Sir if I could quickly ask you about Christy Hyde, he has been complaining that he and his family are being harassed by the police, now isn't reporting an alleged police abuse a way to keep the police in line? The commissioner dismissed it yesterday but doesn't matter if this person is a gangster, he is also a person."
Hon. Kareem Musa - Minister of Home Affairs
"Yeah it's very important and I always say that while I acknowledge that we must prevent crime from taking place and as you know, retaliation is a common occurrence when we have such high profile murders taking place in Belize City it's very important for us to respect the rights of individuals but at the same time the police officers do have a job to do. Police officers do not want to be monitoring any particular person or gang, that's not what they would want to be doing on a daily basis and all that I can ask if that in the process of monitoring that civilians and those individuals who are being monitored to comply with the police because it's very important for the police officers carry out their duties. I can tell you that just yesterday there was another find of a weapon, a firearm very early in the morning, I think at around 6:40 in the morning and so, criminals these days are executing their missions very early in the day, so the police officers have a very hard task to do and so we just ask that citizens comply when it is that they are being searched."
