U.S. Embassy Comments on American Flag on Belize Police Cars

Bruce Matthews

Earlier in the newscast, we showed you the presentation of a diplomatic note through the CARSI initiative, to the tune of four point one million dollars U.S. This program has been used to fund things like the big Police pickups used all across the country – thirty-eight of them so far. Those vehicles have been spoken of all the way in the House of Representatives, when Prime Minister Dean Barrow spoke in not quite complimentary terms of the big U.S. flags emblazoned on these gifts. It’s kind of an iffy situation, where we’re accepting the gifts with hands wide open, but we don’t appreciate it being rubbed in our faces every time the vehicles pass by. Not surprisingly, the folks at the U.S. Embassy have also heard those comments, and are doing something about it.

Bruce Matthews, Chargé de ‘Affaires, U.S. Embassy

“We’ve seen some news reports making the mistake that there are Americans in those vehicles because of the American flags. We’ve heard those issues and we are working to correct that. We don’t anyone to be confused that there are Americans out there doing the good work that the Police Force is doing, so we’re going to change those and work on a different type of logo. Our thoughts at the moment are to do something with the Belize and American flags combined to symbolize the joint part. But we’re still working on that, but I just want people to know that we’ve heard, and I don’t want there to be any confusion on that.”