Dec 30, 2022

Tracing Illegal Firearms in Belize – its Origin and the Interventions

Arms trafficking is a global issue that requires a multiagency approach to bring under control, but the data available is sparse and as such poses an existential threat to humanity.  According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, gangs and drug cartels commit much of the violence in the Central American region, including Belize, but the guns they use are primarily smuggle from other countries, including the United States.  So how are these guns making their way into Belize? Tonight, we present to you a special investigative report on the tracing of illegal firearms, their destructive impact and the effort by law enforcement agencies to remove illegal guns off the streets. News Five’s Duane Moody reports.

 

It was a mid-afternoon sting operation – over a dozen police officers, armed with high-powered rifles descended into a hotspot in Belize City. They were searching for evidence of criminal activity. It’s the final component of routine operations carried out by the Belize Police Department, specifically the Gang Intelligence Investigation and Interdiction Unit, better known as GI3, established back in 2021.

 

Insp. Samuel Bonilla, Deputy Commander, GI3

“Our office is structured with different responsibilities such as that of intelligence, investigation and of course we have the operational section. So after we have those intelligence, we do an investigation and here we are today doing the operation to ensure that we carry out the mandate.”

 

That mandate as law enforcement officers is diverse, but taking guns off the streets remains a priority threat for the Belize Police Department because of its destructiveness – it erodes citizen security and makes Belize the country with the seventh highest murder rate, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s Global Study on Homicide 2019.  According to the Belize Crime Observatory, there were one hundred and twenty-five murders recorded in 2021.

 

Dr. Richard Rosado, Deputy Commissioner of Police

“Criminals use firearms in feud against other criminal groups or for protection against other criminal gangs or to expand their criminal turf. We are working with our international, regional and local security forces to reduce the flow of firearms into and within the country. And we are conducting targeted operation based on actionable intelligence. I would like to say that our operation throughout the year from January to December of this year, we have seized over two hundred firearms off the streets.”

 

Deputy Commissioner of Police Doctor Richard Rosado confirms that seventy-five percent of the murders in Belize are committed with the use of a firearm, primarily as a result of gang feuds. Videos and pictures have and continue to be posted on social media platforms of nefarious characters toting firearms of differing caliber and destructive power, even prohibited guns. The police have used these images to level charges, but where do guns come from? It’s not given much thought by the public.

 

Erin Garnett, PR Manager, Belize City Council

“I would have no idea.”

 

Duane Moody

“You think they buy it dah stores?”

 

Erin Garnett

“I do not think they buy it at stores, no.”

 

Duane Moody

“Where you think they get it from?”

 

Erin Garnett

“Perhaps they are sold to people who already have gun licenses.”

 

Omar Caceres, Caye Caulker Resident

“Come from different parts of the country, especially from Mexico.”

 

Jahiem Tasher, Belize City Resident

“I feel like bad man get gun from police because I feel like police affiliated with the bad man dehn. So I just feel like dehn get it from the police.”

 

Duane Moody

“There are forty-four companies in the business of legally selling guns to persons who have acquired a gun license, vetted and approved by the Commissioner of Police. This is one such business. But the firearms sold here are not the guns used in the commission of crimes.”

 

Gian Cho, Executive Director, Belize National Forensic Science Service

“An overall trend that we see for the majority of crime guns that come into the forensic lab, they originate from either Central American countries, mainly the neighboring countries El Salvador, Guatemala Honduras as well as Mexico and the U.S. That’s where the majority of the crime guns that we receive at the forensic lab originate from.”

 

Duane Moody

“What kind of guns are we seeing coming into Belize? The typical nine millimeter or prohibited firearms?”

 

Gian Cho

“It’s a mix. We have the common short arms, we have the prohibited firearms as well; we have the rifles, the long arms. So it varies. It’s a mixture of the different types of firearms that come in.”

 

Duane Moody

“There are some that are of a military grade as well?”

 

Gian Cho

“Yes those sometimes submitted as found property. Some of them are linked to large stashes of controlled substances as well as the drug plane landings. Crime guns come to Belize already with a history in another country. So those ones, how they come in across the border, that’s the question that investigators along with the help of customs very much need to answer.”

 

Duane Moody

“So these are coming through legal points of entry?”

 

Dr. Richard Rosado

“…both the legal point of entry and the illegal point of entries.”

 

This transborder issue is compounded with guns and ammunition coming into the country through legal points of entry. We sought answers from the Customs and Excise Department, but were refused comment, saying that they needed to get legal advice on giving an interview. But that department, along with other enforcement agencies in Belize, was part of a regional joint firearm operation between Interpol and the Caribbean Community Implementation Agency for Crime and Security and nineteen other countries.

 

Dr. Richard Rosado

“The success of that operation was impressive. Combined with the entire Caribbean, the operation removed three hundred and fifty firearms off the street, three thousand three hundred rounds of ammunition, plus ten point one tons of cocaine and two point five tons of cannabis. And that operation saw the arrest of five hundred and ten individuals.”

 

The gun law as it currently stands would see any ordinary citizen who is found with an unlicensed firearm or ammunition incarcerated at the Belize Central Prison, but through intervention efforts, gang affiliates have been surrendering their guns and ammunition, without punity.

 

William Dawson, Director, Leadership Intervention Unit

“We’ve seen the level of destruction guns can do and we know that guns don’t even respect the persons behind it if it reaches in the wrong hands. And so people from the community have been calling us and they have been exposing some of the illegal firearms in their community. In fact some of the community leaders themselves have been giving in some of these weapons.”

 

Most crucial is the impact of gun violence on families and the society. The murder of Dwayne Gabourel back in 2021 captures this trauma.

 

Rhondine Almendarez, Mother of Dwayne Gabourel [File: September 27^th, 2021]

“I holla atta ahn and I seh, “Pa, breathe fi me…” and di policeman seh, “Yes mommy, noh stop that.”

 

Kareem Musa, Minister of Home Affairs [November 17^th, 2021]

“It is really hurtful because we see where our young people are victims of these crimes and we need to do more as a department and as a country, as family unit – we need to protect young people more.”

 

Margaret Nicholas, Former Executive Director, N.C.F.C. [September 30^th, 2021]

“The reality is that you realize that it could be your child. It could have been your child. Because I could have sent my child to pick up that bread and if it is because of the color shirt that he was wearing, mistaken identity or whatever it is, it is traumatic.”

 

Duane Moody

Over one hundred murders have been recorded so far for 2022 – that’s lives lost by gun violence, or illegal firearms. The effort to get these guns off the street would require action by the police and government agencies, but also the public reporting any knowledge of illegal guns to the police or crime stoppers. Duane Moody for News Five.