Ground broken on new forensic lab
According to local law enforcement authorities, every year police pathologists conduct post-mortem examinations on more than three hundred bodies…all this with limited manpower and resources. It comes as a welcome relief then, for those who must work in the dead zone, that construction work has begun on a National Forensics Laboratory. The lab, to be located adjacent to the B.D.F. Price Barracks in Ladyville, will be two stories high in its first phase, but is being built to one day accommodate two additional floors. An existing building already on the property will house the morgue. Officials in the Ministry of Home Affairs predict that the new facility will help bring many more criminals to justice.
Alan Usher, C.E.O., Ministry of Home Affairs
“The impact is that the judiciary are dependent on getting convictions based on eyewitness evidence. When we are able to tag a crime to a means of a crime, the murder weapon, for example, to a suspect, then we will be able to make such convictions. We’ll be able to make convictions simply by linking, using scientific evidence.”
“And the equipment, we have pledges both from, we have partners in this effort. Basically G.O.B. is providing the building and the personnel and the existing equipment that is in the old, well what will soon become the old laboratory down in Belize City. There are a few valuable pieces of equipment that will be moved into this new facility. We have asked that the U.S. and British Government pledge of funding support be put towards equipment. Two Fridays ago we held an equipment priorities conference involving the players, and we have achieved a priority list of equipment. And it is from the equipment priorities list that we will produce a training priority list and set about to recruit the scientists to be further trained to operate that equipment.”
Rotary Belize has promised to assist in providing training and expertise to the forensics team. The new lab building will cost approximately one million dollars and is being constructed by Carlos Barillas Limited, with engineering services provided by Carlton Young Engineering. The work is expected to be completed within six months.
