Police Constable charged with extortion
The integrity of the Police Department is once again under question tonight as a policeman has been accused of using the fear surrounding the kidnapping of Menno Penner to extort money from a Mennonite businessman. P.C. Leonard Williams, who was detained on Friday night, was this morning charged in Belmopan Magistrate’s Court with extortion and corruptly soliciting a reward from Spanish Lookout businessman Ben Brown. The details of the bizarre case would appear almost comical, were it not for the serious nature of the offense and the state of tension now existing in the Mennonite community following the as yet unresolved kidnapping of Penner. It is alleged that Williams, attached to the Belmopan Dragon Unit, arranged for calls and notes to Brown threatening him and family members with harm or death if he did not deposit two thousand dollars in a bag at a spot near the Iguana Creek Road. The caller, speaking in English, identified himself as a member of the same gang that had kidnapped Menno Penner in March. Brown became suspicious when Williams, a man he had known for several years, counseled him to go ahead and pay the money, going so far as to assure Brown that no police patrols would be in the area at the time of the pickup. Brown then alerted the Police Internal Affairs Unit which arranged to stakeout the site of the drop. Sure enough at the appointed hour Constable Williams arrived and was promptly arrested as he counted the cash. On Sunday Williams was given police bail and he will reappear in Magistrate’s Court on June twenty ninth. He has also been interdicted from duty pending the outcome of the case. Meanwhile the climate of fear, which has gripped the Mennonite community since the March sixteenth kidnapping of Menno Penner, continues to grow. His captors, believed to be a gang of Salvadorans and Guatemalans who operate back and forth across the Western border, are said to be demanding a ransom of a million U.S. dollars. Police report no new developments in efforts to attain his freedom.
