The US Embassy and the National Forensic Science Service have teamed up to give the Scenes of Crimes technicians in Dangriga a proper workspace. The new building, which is owned by the government, will allow these technicians to properly collect and examine evidence that will assist the police in their investigations. Courtney Menzies was there for the ribbon cutting:
Dangriga now has its own Forensic Scenes of Crime office after 6 years in a less-than-ideal office. Their new building was designed by MIDH especially for the work that they do and was built with the financial assistance of the US Embassy.
The Minister of Home Affairs said that it will be a major boost to the investigative work of the police.
Oscar Mira, Minister of Home Affairs
"We now have an adequate, purposely built area for their work. As was explained a while ago by the director, it is going to make the work easier, it is going to make the work more secure, and now with the adequate infrastructure in place, we know that there can be more forensic based evidence taken to the court."
Katharine Beamer, US Charge d Affairs
"As you know, our administration is very focused on countering the narcotics trade in Belize and also reducing violence and crime. And, in concert with our Belizean counterparts, we noticed that, Dangriga lacked adequate infrastructure for forensic science. And so we invested around 740,000 Belize dollars in this new facility with state of the art equipment and, everything is built in compliance with international standards, so that all of the evidence that's collected during crimes can be stored properly and provide ultimately for better prosecutions and convictions and serve as a deterrent to crime."
Gian Cho, Executive Director, National Forensic Science Service
"You always hear the government of Belize rents too much offices, this is GOB owned. With the strong partnership from the US government, we acquired the land, the US government built the building, bought the equipment, did some cost sharing with security and other requirements so we can have the building operationalized, so we own this building now."
And Cho explained how this new building - along with the new equipment - will advance their work.
Gian Cho, Executive Director, National Forensic Science Service
"The way its designed, yes it's small but we don't have 20 personnel, we just have a handful of personal who will be using it but the way it was designed was to meet the international requirements and the international guidelines for forensic crime scene work so we have things like separation of work spaces, measures to prevent cross contamination, measures to ensure chain of custody can be proven in court, secure access areas, secure entry, the full requirements that you would go to other countries and see what are the requirements for a crime scene office, this office was designed to meet all of those."
"It's not all about convictions, it's also about using scientific evidence so that the innocent person can be exonerated, can be acquitted but yes we also want to make sure that forensic science is relied upon more by police investigators and prosecutors when they're marshaling their case through the court. So it's not just about eyewitness evidence, we want them to rely more on DNA, ballistic evidence, on fingerprint evidence."
The value of this investment is 370,000 US dollars.
This project initially began in 2019 but was delayed due to the pandemic, along with budgetary cuts.
