BELIZE POLICE DESTROY A YEAR WORTH OF FIREARMS THEY HAD CONFISCATED

Every year or so the police publicly dispose of all the crime related firearms they have confiscated in the course of their work. And while criminals don’t seem to have much trouble finding equally lethal replacements, the annual exercise at least gives us an indication of what kind of weaponry is out there.

News Five’s Marion Ali reports.

Marion Ali, Reporting

This morning the Queen Street Police Station compound was noisy with the sound of a heavy duty power saw cutting through metal as the Department destroyed well over a hundred illegal weapons.Most of the weapons were seized and/or discovered over the past year during house raids or personal searches. While the guns are dismantled, the seized ammunition is used by the police.

Allen Whylie, Assistant Commissioner of Police, “At times those ammunitions would be put into in-service training practice by the police. It does not get back on the street and again the principle of guns being recovered, small arms are being sold back to the public through the Ministry of Finance that has been discontinued for quite some time also. So once we retrieve it, it will be destroyed.”

The weapons were rendered harmless following court orders.

Supt. Miguel Guzman, Commander, Administration, “We will disable the firearms, cutting off the main components of it, make sure that it cannot be repaired again. After that exercise is done we will go with it one by one until the entire stock is destroyed or disabled and thereafter we will proceed and dispose of it in the deep waters of the sea.”

Marion Ali, “So if they’re found they can never be reconfigured?”

Supt. Miguel Guzman, “They can never be. They will not be able to be repaired or used for any parts. They will be completely disabled.”The destruction comes three days after a blast by a hand grenade killed a teen and injured eleven others. Although there were no grenades in today’s collection, there was no shortage of firepower, as police disposed of two rocket launchers and five machine guns. But the heavy calibre of weapons is nothing new for Assistant

Commissioner of Police, Allen Whylie. A.C.P. Allen Whylie, “The trend for many years has been that we’ve been retrieving high powered weapons off the street so I’m not surprised.”And while he is not startled by the types of weapons, Whylie believes there needs to be closer cohesion among the various law enforcement authorities in detecting and intercepting illegal weapons entering Belize.A.C.P.

Allen Whylie, “These things come through the borders, they come through the seas, they come through the various ports we suspect and we need to improve our level of collaboration that we’d be able to be more proactive. We need to get more information that we’ll be able to interdict more of these things and try to prevent them from getting into the hands of criminals.”

Altogether there were one hundred and seventy-four weapons destroyed, including thirty-two rifles, thirty-seven shotguns, five machine guns, two rocket launchers, ninety-three handguns, and five pellet guns.

Reporting for News Five Marion Ali.

Present to observe the destruction was Chief Magistrate Margaret Gabb, along with senior police officers and the media.