Joint Operation and Intelligence Center active and successful

The New Horizons initiative is a collaborative effort between both the US military and the B.D.F.  One of their projects is the joint operating center, better known as JOC, which allows for local law enforcement agencies to tap into assistance from the US. JOC has been active since April of this year and since then have conducted several missions within the Chiquibul and the Bladen Reserve. Today, Brigadier General David Jones says JOC has been effective.

Brigadier General David Jones, Commander, B.D.F.

David Jones

“We started off calling it the JOC; it has changed its name to JIOC. JOC means the Joint Operation Center; we’ve transformed it now to JIOC which is Joint Operation and Intelligence Center because we’ve combined intelligence personnel inside the building. That building has been operating for over two months from the time we inaugurated it. The B.D.F. was the first to get in, then we had the coast guard, the police and sometimes the Customs and Immigration works with us. We’ve done a number of successful operations inside the Joint Operation Center. We had the marijuana eradication campaign that we did with the US Army where Joint Task Force Bravo came in from Honduras and we destroyed over twenty-nine million dollars worth of marijuana plantation. We’ve done two huge operation along the border destroying illegal plants, plantation and capturing people planting marijuana and capturing people doing illegal logging within the Chiquibul and also the Bladen Reserve.  So that’s center has been very operational. We are working along with other organizations, the Police and the Coast Guard, and we continue to plan operation and execute operations from there.”

In the case of any natural disaster such as hurricanes or flooding to affect the country, Jones says that there is also a space for NEMO to operate from the center.