Tonight, the police high command has not responded to a video posted online. It shows the police commanding a mentally ill man to strip away layers of clothing. He is detained at a Belize City police precinct and wears about 10 layers of clothes. They then mock him for wearing a piece of women's underwear - all the while, faithfully capturing the humiliating process on a cell phone.
It depicts callous and insensitive behavior towards a vulnerable man - and what's worse is that one of the officers is an Inspector. The recently elected police association was the first to put out a statement saying, quote, "We the central body of the police association and in extension the rank and file of the Belize police department condemns the actions of these selfish persons who are the author of that video circulating on social media, on behalf of the police department we want to apologize to the young man in that video for the act done towards him." End quote.
Today in Belmopan the minister and the Deputy Compol said they had not seen the video:
Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs
"I'll have to review the footage to see what actions can be taken."
Bart Jones, Deputy Commissioner of Police
"Certainly we will look. I have not seen the video myself but once these things happen we do in fact look into them and deal with the officers accordingly. One of the things, apart from arms control, the department has been doing is promoting human rights within policing and so we are grounding our policing on human rights principles and part of the training is just that, not in any way discriminate or humiliate or ill treat any person especially those of vulnerable groups so certainly that goes against our principles and our code of conduct and once they are found guilty."
We'll keep following the story to let you know what - if any - disciplinary action is taken.
