Email

Print

The Join Operation Center has been operational for the past 2 months, and today the commander of the BDF told the media that it is working exactly as intended:

Brigadier General David Jones, Commander, B.D.F.
"We started off calling it the JOC; it has changed its name to JIOC. JOC means the Joint Operation Center; we've transformed it now to JIOC which is Joint Operation and Intelligence Center because we've combined intelligence personnel inside the building. That building has been operating for over two months from the time we inaugurated it. The B.D.F. was the first to get in, and then we had the coast guard, the police and sometimes the Customs and Immigration works with us. We've done a number of successful operations inside the Joint Operation Center. We had the marijuana eradication campaign that we did with the US Army where Joint Task Force Bravo came in from Honduras and we destroyed over twenty-nine million dollars worth of marijuana plantation. We've done two huge operation along the border destroying illegal plants, plantation and capturing people planting marijuana and capturing people doing illegal logging within the Chiquibul and also the Bladen Reserve. So that's center has been very operational. We are working along with other organizations, the Police and the Coast Guard, and we continue to plan operations and execute operations from there."

Daniel Ortiz
"Is it working as intended?"

Brigadier General David Jones, Commander, B.D.F.
"It is working exactly as intended and for the future come this year if there is any disaster that's where NEMO will play a part as well where they can set up an office inside the JIOC and then we can execute operations to restore Belize back to normalcy if there is any emergency from hurricanes here. There are training exercises plan; there is a big one plan for next year. Belize is expected to host Exercise Trade winds again where all the militaries from around the Caribbean and US Army Forces, Canadian, British will come into Belize and do joint operations for a minimum of two weeks. All the training exercise and planning and execution will be done from inside that building. Since we have the building we have upgrade a capacity for the BDF to do more and to be involve in more."

"Incisive Gallop", as we told you, was the joint operation conducted by BDF and the US Military to target Guatemalan incursions into the Chiquibul and Bladden Reserves. The joint taskforce was able to destroy about 5.9 million dollars - worth of marijuana plantations. It happened in May, and it was planned out of the Joint Operation and Intelligence Center, as it is now known.