Policemen accused of extortion, robbery

In Spanish it?s called “sin verguenza,” the well-known Yiddish translation is “chutzpah,” while the English would term it “the height of arrogance.” In Belize, however, we just call it being “facey.” But all those words don’t even begin to describe the behaviour of two policemen who are accused of robbing a Belize City Boledo vendor. According to Nadine Belizaire, a Boledo clerk selling out of Port Loyola Shopping Centre on Caesar Ridge Road, two men who identified themselves as police officers approached the shop around eight on Friday night. They threatened to arrest the store’s owner, Ruan Zhu Yin, for selling illegal lottery unless he paid them a two hundred dollar bribe. When the owner refused, the two men grabbed a plastic bag containing the night’s receipts of eight hundred dollars and the Boledo book and fled. It turns out that the two men were not lying about their profession as they were later identified as Police Constables Llewelyn Lino and Alfaro Bol. Lino, attached to C.I.B., has been placed on interdiction by the Police Commissioner pending the outcome of investigations, while Bol is already on interdiction over his alleged involvement in helping detained murder suspect Ornel Welcome shave his head and face to avoid being identified in a police lineup. The two officers are also expected to face criminal charges.