He may be the target of political smear campaigns and all kinds of memes there in Belize, but Compol Chester is now taking on a new tasking as President of the Commission of Chiefs and Directors of Police of Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Colombia. Today, the 34th Extra Ordinary General Assembly took place virtually and was presided over by Chester Williams, who has been serving as Interim President since May. And after the elections, he officially took over the role.
Back in May, he told us how he became interim president and what the mandate of the commission is.
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
"Certainly, we had a recent resignation of the president of the association of directors and chief of police in Central America, Mexico and Colombia. The presidency was being held by Costa Rica, the commissioner of police from Costa Rica, but he abruptly resigned from office and so did the first vice president who is from Guatemala. With that now the most senior commissioner in the region then assumes the presidency as interim president of the commission until the elections are held to elect a new president."
"Its so happens that I am the most senior commissioner or director of police in the region and so I am appointed interim president."
"On June 22nd of this year, I will be sharing an extraordinary AGM of the association. At that AGM will table the agenda which will be to look at what the association had achieved over the first 6 months of the year where when Costa Rica was chairing and then we will look at what is left to achieve under what we had set out to be done by the association and at the end of that meeting we're going to have a election of a new president and I am offered myself to be elected president when that times comes."
"We work very closely with Interpol of the Americas and the mandate basically is to coordinate policing efforts between the members country and as I said it has to do with Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean, because there are countries in the Caribbean like Dominica and Haiti that are also part of that association and so what is done is that all the efforts are coordinated. We would normally do what we refer to as regional operations targeting human trafficking, human smuggling, drug trafficking, cyber-crimes, auto theft. So we have a number of agenda items that we normally deal with on a yearly basis regionally and again, it is good that we conduct these operations simultaneously in the respective countries and then when it is done we would then put together a result. It goes to the association secretariat as well as to Interpol in El Salvador."
He is the first commissioner from Belize to hold this position.
