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Well, after 2 years of consultation between the Government of Belize, Canada and the United States, all the major law enforcement organizations are pooling their resources, their expertise, and their man-power into one joint task force. It's called the Joint Operation Center, which is housed on the BDF's Price Barracks, and 7News was at the launch. Daniel Ortiz reports:

Daniel Ortiz reporting
Today, the Ministry of National Security, US Government and the Canadian Government celebrated the opening of the Joint Operating Center. It is a 3 million dollar facility which will fuse all forms of law enforcement, an improved form of interdepartmental cooperation.

Margaret Hawethorne - Charge' D' Affairs, US Embassy
"The Joint Operation Center (JOC) represents the culmination of years of teamwork and collaboration between the Belize Defence Force, the US Southern Command and Governments of the Unites States, Belize and Canada. The Primary purpose of the JOC is the exercise of the operation, command and control. The JOC will enable operators to plan and execute maritime interception. The JOC will also help the Belize Defence Forces to determine and prioritize operational priority intelligence requirements, collect and share operational information, interpret operational information and integrate all other tasks performed by the agencies of the Ministry of National Security."

H.E. Stuart Savage - Canadian High Commissioner To Belize
"We are very pleased that Canada has been able to participate in the establishment of a joint operation center that will bring together a lot of the resources that already exists here in Belize so that they can better work and respond in the face of these very real and important forces that challenge the wellbeing of Belize and its citizens. This joint center will provide one stop shopping central location for interagency coordination between law enforcement officials, the Coast Guard and of course the Belize Defence Forces and perhaps others over time as experience and knowledge grow here."

"This will enable Belize to better face these natural and unnatural forces that challenge its wellbeing over time."

Lt. Col. (Ret'd) George Lovell - CEO, Ministry of National Security
"I believe, ladies and gentlemen, that no one country can single handedly defeat the threat of transnational organize crime that is now prevalent in our region especially these lesser developed countries such as Belize."

"Belize with its very small security and law enforcement forces and lack of resources necessary to effectively deter, detect and defeat these threats - the only option to address this matter is from a collective and collaborative approach with our partners."

The law enforcement agencies of Belize are therefore partnering to centralize intelligence gathering, resource management, and better reaction to crimes within the country's borders.

Brigadier General David Jones - Commander, BDF
"It will be intelligence operation. There will be a fusion center which for the most part has been established already. There needs to be more enhancement, however, that fusion center will send information direct to this facility; Joint Operation Center. The Joint Operation Center, its director will decide how the operation will be conducted based on the intelligence information received. They in turn will execute the mission by sending the information to the joint Enforcement Team. This will be a team comprise of members of the Belize Defence Force, the Belize Coast Guard, Immigration or Customs Department. Depending on what the operations are will be dependent on what law enforcement agency or military organization will be going towards the target on that operation. If customs is necessary, customs officers will be on the operation. If immigration is necessary, they will be in the operation."

All matters dealt with by the Joint Operation Center are issues of national security, and will be treated as such on a need-to-know basis, meaning personnel only in the JOC. Not even the commanders of the different law enforcement Agencies will have any influence on the direction of these missions.

Brigadier General David Jones - Commander, BDF
"Most of the operations will be done in secret, so when that information comes into the JOC and the director sends out that information to the Joint Enforcement Team, no other organization or elements outside of this building will know what is exactly happening. It will be done in secret. Until after the operation is done then the public may know what actually occurred. Because the guys that will be working in the Joint Enforcement Team are going to be vetted and they are going to get different vetting information from them; they are going to be polygraph tested, so that they don't divulge information. People deploying from here won't be having cell phones with them because we don't want information send out to anyone when operations are deployed from here. Even I as Commander of the BDF may not know when an operation is going to be sent here. The director has that full jurisdiction of sending out high intensity type operation from this facility."

So, what is the input from the other major law enforcement agencies?

Admiral John Borland - Commandant, Belize Coast Guard
"The Coast Guard is going to have 8 people permanently attached or embedded in the JOC here at Price Barracks. Their duties range from battle captains to duty officers to clerks to signalers and operations analysis and then there is going to be one Coast Guard officer assigned as the Coast Guard liaison officer for maritime affairs or maritime operations. It's going to be a two year stint for the 8 of them and besides that we will also have a team of navy seals that form a part of the Joint Enforcement Team."

ACP Miguel Segura - Acting Commissioner of Police
"It's basically a collective approach to deal with those types of crimes that we are seen that is threatening us along our border; those transnational organized crimes. From the police aspect, many of the times we get focused on internal issues, but also this JOC will tend to support us to look at those external ones that are actually affecting us that have the spin off effects like violence, firearms and drugs that stays in our country."

Brigadier General David Jones - Commander, BDF
"We will have to integrate the members from the Customs and Immigration onto how a military operation is run."

And the man at the helm of this facility and its operations, which are almost completely autonomous, is Major Charlton Roches. He will be in charge all information coming in, and all operations initiated in response.

Major Charlton Roches - Director, Joint Operation Center
"This facility here is basically separate from the Belize Defence Force, the Police Department, Coast Guard, Customs and Immigration. We will have them here with their capabilities and their expertise to plan and also conduct operations. There are understanding between the heads of department and there are policies that would need to be drafted up, if not yet draft, by the National Security Council for that to be functional. That is something that is yet to come. With those policies - that will give me the authority as the director of the JOC to execute whatever that is required as it relates to organized crimes."

Major Roches says that he is up to the challenge.

Major Charlton Roches - Director, Joint Operation Center
"I've been the operations officer for the Belize Defence Force for the past 3 years and I have been working with these other agencies over that time period and we've faced a number of challenges as it relates to reaction time, resources. Because as you all know we are already tight with cash as the security forces. By having those individuals link from the respective departments and to some extent some of the resources too as well, we should be able to reduce those challenges that we had prior."

It is expected that the JOC will be fully operational sometime in January 2014. Former Commander of the BDF, retiring Brigadier General Dario Tapia is credited with laying the ground work for the realization of the J-O-C.