7 News Belize

Old Evidence Up In Smoke
posted (February 6, 2013)
This morning members of the Belize police department in the presence of a Magistrate and Clerk of Court gathered at the Belize City Landfill - for the destruction of drugs in cases where they are no longer needed as evidence.

An estimated hundred pounds of cocaine and a hundred and thirty pounds of assorted crack cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine were burned. 7 news and other media houses were there to witness the event.

Mario Bustillos - National Exhibit Keeper, Police Department
"We're destroying concluded evidence and found property which includes mainly drugs. We are destroying crack cocaine, marijuana, and cocaine in its other forms. While I can't tell you a specific number, it's an estimate of a hundred pound of cocaine was destroyed just now, and 130 pounds of assorted crack cocaine, marijuana, and methamphetamines have been destroy. When destroying this, we need witnesses, of course, so that is where we get the magistrate, the clerk of court, the exhibit keeper, the officer commanding prosecution branch, and the media. The process is, we get these people together, and we have them come down here. The drugs have been tagged in a list and order, and as we go destroying them, the names and names of the certain parcel is called out, and when it is brought up, it is cross-referenced with a list that has been provided to each one of these persons in attendance, and they would cross it out after seeing the drug. The drug would then be thrown into the furnace for destruction. Because of the fumes, they would cover their faces so that they would not get the effects from the vaporization of the cocaine and weed."

Drugs are routinely destroyed at a variety of locations by police.

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7 News Belize