ComPol Says Additional Resources Needed to Fight Illicit Drug Trade
Chester Williams
Police are spread thin and under-resourced in the fight against the illicit drug trade, which uses sophisticated equipment to evade the long arms of the law. Williams says that the Anti-Narcotics Unit is also anaemic in personnel and that while a radar has been acquired, another will be required to assist the police in tracking the narcos.
Chester Williams, Commissioner of Police
“We cannot stop it. And since we cannot do that, we must do our next best, which is reduce the amount that lands. And I do believe that we are doing good at that. If you ask if we can do better, I would say yes. But it requires that we get additional resources to become more effective. So, what I would want to see is for us to be able to get the additional resources that we need as possible.”
Marleni Cuellar
“What type of resources?”
Chester Williams
“We need to get a radar that detects those planes when they dip below the three thousand feet.”
Marleni Cuellar
“So you are saying that the recent radar that was required is not sufficient?”
Chester Williams
“We have not acquired that radar; that should come in November. I won’t go into too much specifics where that is concerned and its capabilities, but that radar will still not solve our problems. We still need an additional radar to go along with that and we are trying to see how we can work with the DEA to get that additional radar. You have to understand that when you have a track coming, because we cannot detect exactly where it is going to land, we have several potential landing spots across the country. The number of persons at A.N.U. is not sufficient and so we have to take from our regular police officers and the other specialized units—like the M.I.T., the Gang Suppression Unit, the S.P.U.—to be a part of the response to deal with these plane landings. And so, we deploy to several areas across the country in the event that the plane will land in any one of those locations. And so, that is why I say we take officers from off the streets, who would routinely be patrolling, to go and deal with the issues of plane landings. And even with that at times…while we cover the potential landing spots that we know, we are seeing now that they go and land in areas that we wouldn’t even class as potential landing spots.”
