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Cayo South Rep. Speaks Up For Slain Villager
Fri, December 8, 2017
But those were pretty much the only sparks that flew the whole day. Even when the often pugnacious Julius Espat stood up to speak on the killing of 20 year old Teakettle Villager Edwin Antonio Baires Hernandez - he tried to be constructive, not combative.

Espat says it happened din his division where he claims villagers fear police:...

Hon. Julius Espat, Cayo South
"This person was not charged for anything that was killed. This person had no criminal activity, but yet the security forces went in and as a consequence of the person being shot, Madam Speaker, he died. Well people well he choked to death, but why did he choked to death? Well it could be 1) because the shot created something in his body for solids to be able to stuck in his throat. That is a possibility. But it doesn't really matter Madam Speaker, the police officers are there to protect our citizens and I believe the police officers should also be trained in first aid and therefore I do not see anybody that can give me an excuse when somebody that has been shot in the foot that is bleeding and they are saying now that he was choking. Why the security forces could not have given first aid to this young man so that he could be alive today?"

"Because the villagers were unhappy. Because the villagers were seeking out justice, they went back to old ages again and they decided that smoke signal is the only signal that they can use to have the authorities come to their village. So you know who were arrested? 3 people from the village were arrested because they were there by the fires and they were arrested for I think it's called "Illegal gathering" and the police officers were taking away phones from individuals and they were taking away the videos that they were taping. Having your phone being use to record an event is not illegal in this country. So the security forces have no reason to be doing that."

"Why am I saying all of this? We have a serious problem in our police force as I see it. This is the second tyre fire that happened in Teakettle for a short period of time. There was one in the main village of Teakettle in the main highway a couple months ago. There is this one. We have still the killing of the Thimbrel and Lopez boys from Camalote that has not been solved."

"In the eyes of the Cayo South constituency the police officers are lacking in their ability to protect them."

Hon. Elodio Aragon, UDP OW East, Home Affairs
"Yes, we have instances of abuse. There is no two ways about that. We are dealing with a police department that interacts with the public on a day to day basis and at times these interactions are not with the best of people, so there are always will be instances of allegations of abuse, instances of allege misconduct and I won't say that some of these aren't true. Of course some of these are. This is a police department we are dealing with and dealing with the worse of the worst at times in our communities."

"In regards to the investigations in Cayo that has resulted in the death of someone, that file has been sent to the DPP, so the DPP can give directives in that matter. This is a police investigation in terms of the professional standard branch looking into the matter, doing the investigation that needs to be done and be sent to the DPP for her to give directives."

"If you have seen what we have done with the professional standard branch within the last year, we have put at the helm the assistant commissioner of police Mr. Chester Williams and we did that not because we wanted Chester Williams out of Belize City, but we put him there because for the police department it is important that we strengthen the professional standard branch of the Belize Police Department and I want to assure the general public that if you have seen through the news of lately, since we have put Chester Williams there, we have seen an increase of these instances being reported to the police department. We have seen an increase where police officers have been dealt with disciplinary, been placed on interdiction."

Though Baires Hernandez died from choking Police could still be implicated for causing his death.

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