Internal Police Memo Fingers Fisheries Officer in Drug Trafficking

George Lovell

On Thursday, the news broke of an internal memo from Assistant Superintendent of Police Henry Jemott, Deputy Coastal Executive Officer, to the Head of the Fisheries Department. The memo is dated October sixteenth, and in it Jemott is making serious allegations against a fisheries officer stationed at the Bacalar Chico Marine Reserve. He says that that officer has confessed to being involved in large scale drug trafficking, and is in fact marked for death by the Mexican cartel. Interestingly enough, while Jemott states repeatedly that the individual has confessed to being involved in criminal activity, he wasn’t arrested. All the ASP is asking is for the fisheries officer to be removed from that post immediately because of the threat from the cartel. Incredible allegations for sure, and the memo was copied to both the Minister and C.E.O. in the Ministry of National Security, as well as the Officer Commanding Eastern Division and the Commissioner of Police. Today we spoke to C.E.O. Lovell, who told us that both he and the Commissioner of Police were completely unaware of the internal memo from the Deputy Coastal Executive Officer.

Ret’d. Col. George Lovell, C.E.O., Ministry of National Security

“Normally things like this Mike, I would have expected that if the police had sufficient to arrest, they would arrest. They are the police. Obviously from just looking at what I see here, they don’t have sufficient to take criminal proceedings and so they are asking the department responsible to take some sort of administrative action. That’s what I read from this.”

Mike Rudon

“Would you go so far as to support that action because I thought that it was a good move? If we don’t have enough to arrest, but we are aware that there is a threat…”

Ret’d. Col. George Lovell

“Oh yes, I support these things. Man, I am the one who has the charge to administer a ministry which should ensure that law and order and the rule of law and order is maintained in this country. So if you have people who are doing things like this, I am the first to say, yes, let’s get rid of him. We have no fate in them; we have no place for them without our systems.”

Mike Rudon

“Now sir, finally now on this thing. Where is the…should I say miscommunication? I refer back to this letter from Diana Hall on the tourism police thing. And you have some people saying this never did reach where it was supposed to go. In this one, this is three weeks now this was sent and apparently it never reached anybody. Or whoever it reached never passed it on.”

Ret’d. Col. George Lovell

“We have to look at our systems. I don’t know exactly where the breakdown is but we have to look at our whole system. Matters like this first of all should have been classified; it shouldn’t have been sent out in a memorandum. This means it should have been hand-delivered; somebody should have been signed for it.  We should have had records of all copies that had been produced and it should have been treated with a level of classification that I believe it warrants.”

We were unable to reach the head of the Fisheries Department for comment today. We chose to not reveal the name of the Fisheries officer until we can confirm the allegations against him.