But while only one was sent home on Monday, the ComPol conceded that others have followed. And while this does put a strain on policing efforts, Williams made it clear that police officers are not above the law and as such they must follow the regulations and they will be subject to disciplinary actions.
Chester Williams - Commissioner of Police
"I can tell you again that today we sent home some because the law is the law and again, going back to Mr Bradley's letter, myself or the minister have no legal authority to thwart the law. We cannot delay the implementation of a law, the delay of the implementation of the law must come from the executive or parliament and in the absence of that, we have to abide by the law and so while we have given officers a grace period, I'm sure that yourselves and the Belizean public will understand that if officers are not in compliance with the regulations, we have to take action against them, that is the law. I am sure that if it were a case where we were not in compliance and just allowing officers to come to work without complying with the regulations, you same media people will be down our throats saying that we believe we're above the law and don't want to enforce law against ourselves but want to be telling people to abide by the law. But again, the media at times is hypocritical, you can never please them. So, I understand the angle that you're trying to say but we have a responsibility to the people of this country to ensure as law enforcement officers, that we ourselves abide by the law. So yes, once officers come to work, they're unvaccinated, they don't have a negative test, they will be sent home, they will be marked absent and will be dealt with according to our disciplinary regulations."
But sending the officers home may have an upside since - by the Compol's reckoning - some of them take that time to get vaccinated. The ComPol said the vaxx numbers are trending up.
Chester Williams
"While we have sent home a number of these officers, and I wouldn't say a lot, probably across the country from Tuesday, I would say perhaps around 30 officers. But what we have found out that once the officers are sent home, they either go and get vaccinated or go take the test and they come back to work with either of those. So I think that officers are getting the message, they are for the most part in compliance, we have a strength of just over 2,200 officers and to date we have over 1,800 vaccinate so we just have about 400 unvaccinated, I am sure that number is going to climb and by the end of the week and by early next week, I anticipate for the most part we are going to reach the 2,000 figure but we go have officers for various reasons can't get vaccinated. You would know that the ministry of health have said that if a person have recently recover from covid 19 up to three months they don't need to be vaccinated or take the test so what those officers are doing, they're applying to the ministry of health for the exemption letter to state that they recently recovered and there's no need for them to go through the test or the vaccination until after the three months have relaxed. We also have officers who are breastfeeding and for some reason doctors advised them that they cannot take the vaccine so those officers are being encouraged to do the swabbing so there are different reasons why some officers are not vaccinate, yes, we do have a handful of antivaxxers and we're trying to find a way how we can move around those antivaxxers. In Belize City is our lowest numbers where just around 78% vaccinated in Belize City. Across the country will be in the high 80's."
