Police Upset At Belmopan Family’s Claim That Robbers Wore “Police Boots”
Fitzroy Yearwood
A family from Belmopan says that they were victims of a home invasion on Thursday, during which the intruders reportedly wore police boots. It’s a claim that ticked off the Belize Police Department and its Commissioner, who made clear to the media that there are no boots that are unique to the Belize Police Department. According to the allegation, Victor Gutierrez was at home along with his wife and seven-year-old daughter, around two o’clock in the afternoon, when three men wearing what he describes as police boots, entered their house. Gutierrez said he tried to confront the robbers, but that one of them produced a nine millimeter pistol and forced him into his bedroom, searched the quarters and stole almost three hundred dollars that he had in a Bible. The gunman reportedly threatened to kill Gutierrez twice, he said. The first threat came when the trio demanded an additional eight hundred dollars by daybreak the following morning and said they’d kill Gutierrez if he did not come up with the money. The second time was going to be the consequence if anyone reported the matter to the police. He said that they handcuffed him and threatened to throw him in the bushes. But the police are not sitting well with the notion that the robbers wore police boots and while they have taken Gutierrez’s report, today, their Communications Director, A.S.P Fitzroy Yearwood said there are discrepancies in that report and that they consider the report mischief and now the investigation is on him.
A.S.P. Fitzroy Yearwood, Communications Director, Belize Police Department
“We are treating this report as a mischievous report. After investigators have found too many discrepancies in his initial statement that cannot be proven.”
Reporters
“We know that the report said that the men, burglars, were wearing black boots akin to those worn by police officers. And we know there was a previous incident where two elderly men had said that police robbed their home so many hundred thousand dollars. Do you think that this is similar in the sense that they’re trying to frame or make the police officers look bad?”
A.S.P Fitzroy Yearwood
“Well, whenever people go to that extent to try to make their story believable and to refer to our boots as police boots. We don’t have a particular type of boots that we would want to claim that that is solely used by police officers. Of course, then it would be like the uniform where you will be deemed to be using that illegally if that was a police type boots. One, we don’t have that. I can show you the boots that I am wearing is much different from what other officers would be wearing. So, I believe that he was just trying to make it sound believable. And of course, if we find him to be guilty of committing a mischievous, he will be charged.”
