| And while officers brought the vehicle back on Belizean soil, there's still a debate on whether they should move injured persons to the hospital. The Commissioner said no, while the Minister of Police said discretion should be used. Minister Bernard agreed with the commissioner but said more needs to be done so that the officers aren't put into that predicament.
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness
"From a medical perspective, I'm no medical doctor. I am no medical technician, and you all know that. But when you look at, I mean, when you look at, the commissioner is right in his own way in saying what he said, because when you look at the responsibility of a police officer, they are no medical doctors either, there are no EMT."
"Now what we have seen in this country is that we have been able to train through the fire department, we have been getting additional EMT persons being trained in the field, we are working in the private sector, both in the ministry as well, we are trying to ensure that we enhance EMT services to build the capacity."
"We have to understand. If you are in the U.S, for example, you won't see a police officer moving anybody. There's a response team that will report that comes to the rescue. So in one way, the commissioner is right."
"It's something that we have been used to. Maybe the way he said it came out differently, but in right, the commissioner is right. And not a lot of people realize, oh, the police are there, the police doesn't want to touch the body, they don't want to move anything."
"You cannot just move a person that is injured, just right so. You could cause even more harm. And that's the reason why I think the commissioner made that comment. So it's not for us to condemn him for what he said, but at the same time, for us to understand what the roles and function of every partner when it comes to responding to an emergency has to play. The fire department, the police department, the medical team, and of course, our rescue team, BERT, for example, has their own response. And so we have to find a way as stakeholders to see how we address those type of issues as we go along. There's a lot we need to do, but let us get into that."
Reporter
"In one way he's right, but it was the other side too."
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness
"There's more we need to do. My position is that there's more we need to do."
"So we need to get our EMT personnel, in fact, on the ministry level, we need to see that they train more persons in emergency response. We need more volunteers as well to come on board in terms of being able to respond to an incident on the scene."
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