Rural Rapid Response Team Makes Firearm Bust

The Rural Eastern Division’s Rapid Response Team has been maintaining operations in the two thousand square miles of the Belize District, targeting narcotics and illegal firearms. They got lucky this morning after intelligence led them to an unlicensed shotgun and ammunition in a home on the Phillip Goldson Highway. You may think that a sixteen gauge shotgun on a farm or property, used for protection or hunting wouldn’t be that big a deal. You’d be wrong, though, if the weapon and ammunition are not properly licensed. O.C. of the Ladyville Formation Inspector Juanito Cocom says that the penalty for all unlicensed firearms, whether a nine millimetre pistol or a shotgun, is the same.

Juanito Cocom

Insp. Juanito Cocom, O.C., Ladyville Police

“The Rural Rapid Response Team conducted a search at mile nineteen on the Phillip Goldson Highway, the residence of Brian Davis, twenty-eight years old. Subsequently Police found a sixteen gauge single action shotgun along with five live cartridges. Davis, along with his common-law-wife Louise Meneses, twenty-three, were arrested and have been charged for Kept A Firearm Without a Gun License and Kept Ammunition Without a Gun License. In this case we don’t have any information that it would have been used for anything illegal. It’s probably just a case of a farmer with an unlicensed firearm. We need to through our community policing efforts, we need to bring this information to the public because every firearm falls under the Firearms Act and the laws pertaining to the Firearms Act governs all firearms, not only specific firearms.”

Brian Davis

Reporter

“So you face the same penalties?”

Insp. Juanito Cocom

“The same penalties. If you are found with one cartridge it’s the same thing as if you are found with a nine millimetre round. It’s the same penalty.”