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As you heard, Aragon specifically wants to tackle allegations of corruption within the police department, and right now, in his first few days as Police Minister, there are 2 cases which have already landed on his desk. 

The first is San Pedro Police Constable Zani Savala, who we told you about earlier in the news, and the other is the Mobile Interdiction Team.

You will remember that on our  Monday newscast, Belmopan businessman Raul Acevedo accused the MIT of shaking him down for 16 thousand Mexican pesos, which is equivalent to 2 thousand dollars Belize. They reportedly hustled him this weekend when we was coming back from Mexico. He had a van of declared goods, but also a box of undeclared colognes. He said that the officers pressured him, with the threat of criminal charges first demanding $5,000, and later settling for $2,000.

When we asked Elodio Aragon Jr about it yesterday, he said that he has taken note of it, and he has already passed directions along to look into the man’s story:

Hon. Elodio Aragon - Minister of Police
"These are some of the challenges that we have and we will always have these issues, allegations etc. and these things need to be verified. I am telling you right now I am sure that the police department is looking at it, I spoke to Mr. Blackett this morning because I saw it on the television last and I related it to him and he will be looking into it. My point is this and this is some of the new things that we want to bring in, want to enforce and set mechanism for it to work. We have a professional standard's board right now in existence, to a large extent professional standard's board is a reactive part of the department, it only reacts when there are allegations etc. I want to make proactive at the same time so that our officers from the ground know that we will have people will verify their trust of confidence that they should have as a police officer and we can do this in many ways and some of these are the things that I want to bring forth to the department because at the end of the day a department must be able to stand on credibility to stand on trust and confidence from the public. If we don't have that as a base of a foundation as a police department then we have no police department."

Elodio tells us that he is continuing with the Department’s zero tolerance for corruption and misbehaviour by officers on the job.