Policemen Awarded for Bravery in Apprehension of Queen Street Shooter

Alrick Arnold

Today, the top brass of the Belize Police Department gathered to pay tribute to seven officers – four of them involved in the bizarre shootout in front of the Queen Street Police Station last week. Three men – Corporal Brian Miller, Corporal Joel Grinage and PC Criston Moore received their awards for bravery at the station, while Alrick Arnold received his recognition at his home where he is recovering from a gunshot wound to the chest.

Allen Whylie, Commissioner of Police

“I was also pleased in terms of the response of the other three officers when Corporal Arnold unfortunately was shot on the seventeenth of June on Queen Street here. And those officers without again thinking about their personal safety nor security immediately sprang into action and responded, chasing the shooter and were able to apprehend the shooter. So I am very proud to be their Commissioner of Police and we have many other outstanding officers who do brave things but we’ll be doing a better job in terms of recognizing and putting these things out to the public.”

Allen Whylie

Reporter

“Sir I wanted to ask you about the shooting which happened in front of the Queen Street Police Station. It certainly caught us by surprise, that somebody who turned out to be a minor would actually do something like that in front of the Police Station.”

Allen Whylie

“We’ve seen over the years where our criminal elements are becoming younger and younger, recruited by the gang members. Indeed it’s I believe a first for Belize. It’s not a first for other jurisdiction but indeed it is a wake-up call for us because then we have got to look in terms of how we secure our compound and whatever measures we put on the perimeter to ensure that we don’t have a re-occurrence. But the younger criminals seem to have no reason for living or no motivation in terms of doing the right thing and so as I said they are easily recruited by other senior persons and we’ve seen it.”