And something else that has carried over with no change from the UDP to the PUP are drug plane landings; the narcos own the skies, and it seems they own the night. And recently, they have owned the deep south, staging a number of landings in remote villages - which has proven to be a blind spot for law enforcement.
Early Sunday morning, around the same time that police were addressing the aftermath of the mass shooting in Hopkins Village, some of those officers had to respond to reports that a suspected drug plane had landed in Southern Belize.
They and other BDF enforcement teams confirmed that the plane landed about 6 miles away from Crique Sarco Village in the Toledo District. The aircraft's burnt frame was found on an illegal airstrip which was estimated to be one mile in length.
It was a King Air 200 - typical of the kind used to carry drugs. That's because, like other suspected narco planes, it was completely destroyed by fire. The occupants of the aircraft and the suspected cargo they may have landed with were nowhere to be found.
The Commissioner conceded that his cops were pulled in all directions early on Sunday morning:
Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"Again, Saturday night, the police were monitoring two tracks in our airspace. And I see where people on social media were saying, why do they have to take the police from Hopkins to go and respond to a plane? No, when we do have these events like we have Hopkins Day. We had the music fest in San Pedro. Any time we have major events, you'll find that will deploy our quick response team and our specialized units to assist in policing those events. And so, the quick response team from Dangriga was in charge of policing or patrolling Hopkins due to the Hopkins Day event. When we had the information about the airplane in our airspace, the police officers, the quick response team that was in Hopkins, had to leave Hopkins to respond to the plane, and that left Hopkins open with no patrol because they were the ones who were patrolling. The team, subsequently, along with the BDF team, conducted searches in the southern part of the country as information was that one of the planes faded in the Dolores area. They went into the area. They conducted searches, and the burnt remains of the plane were found. A search was conducted of the area, and up to yesterday and so far, we have not been able to locate anybody nor the cargo we believe that came in the plane."
