Everyone in Belize City knows that crime and the murder rate among young Belize City men is a grave concern, but a newly released documentary, Ross Kemp on Gangs, Season 4: the Belize Episode, by British Academy Film and Television Arts award-winning journalist, Ross Kemp, has evoked the anger of quite a few Belizeans – not the least of them being Prime Minister Dean Barrow, who described the documentary as “an ill-wind that blows absolutely no good.”
Assistant Commissioner of Police, Crispin Jeffries is one of those Belizeans who think that even though the documentary, now available on the Internet, includes exaggerated statements and sensationalized content, it largely reflects reality here.
“I am one of those persons who believe the documentary is telling us, look we are out here sensationalizing, playing games, but there are some harsh realities that we need to face,” says Jeffries.
Poignant in the documentary is Kemp’s showcasing a deadly hand grenade – which he described as “serious hardware” in the hands of Belize City gangs, young men wrapped up in a multi-billion-dollar drug trade that uses them as pawns but which leaves them as poor, or worse yet, dead.
“Our belief is that that grenade may still be out there,” Jeffries told Amandala.
“This is an example of the hardware that’s on the streets of Belize,” says Kemp, pointing out the ability of the “NATO hand grenade” to “kill a lot of people.”
NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – a military alliance of the United States, Canada, and several nations of western Europe. NATO has an extensive inventory of grenades.
“In all my travels around the world, I’ve never seen a gang with this kind of hardware,” Kemp says on camera.
Ross Kemp’s documentary focuses on the gang infestation of Belize City – the country’s commercial capital and main cruise tourism port. But what has sparked a lot of discussion were shots in the documentary of Kemp holding in his hand a very destructive grenade, and saying in his documentary that he could not reveal where he was with the grenade or where he had gotten it from.
Prime Time UK Reality TV (online) quotes Kemp as saying that Belize was the first place where “a gang member” gave him a hand grenade.
Many observers have noted that the grenade held by Kemp is very similar to the grenade that was hurled two weeks ago very close to a mass of Belizeans who were near the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital watching the Carnival Road March – a highlight of the September celebrations. However, in the documentary, the markings on the grenade were covered up with black tape.
Evidently, Kemp had the grenade months before the devastating scare, and police high command says that he never reported it to them and they did not know he was in possession of the deadly explosive device until a month after he left Belize.
“When we saw the documentary, we felt there is some similarity and that is being looked at,” said Jeffries, who added that he is working along with Mr. James Magdaleno, National CIB Chief, and their Belize Defence Force counterparts on the investigations.
Earlier this week, police arrested and charged a 19-year-old of Buttonwood Bay for the throwing of the British army grenade on September 6, and they said it was a gang-related attack, intended to kill members of a rival gang – but which, if successful, could have also claimed scores of innocent lives.
Even though the first detonation of a grenade in the city streets happened in May of this year, Assistant Commissioner of Police, Crispin Jeffries, says that for as many as 10 years, police have known of grenades being on the streets. He told us that police have arrested and prosecuted people in Belize before for grenades, some of them old, rusty and unsafe to those holding them in their possession.
The officer told us that Government will soon implement a period of amnesty for people who want to hand in dangerous weapons, which they will be allowed to turn over to police without penalties.
While we spoke with official sources for their reaction to Kemp’s documentary, we were also able to speak to one of the men filmed extensively for the piece. He is Jason Brown, 30, an instructor in carpentry and agriculture, and youth speaker for the Youth Cadet Service Corps, under the umbrella of Youth For the Future.
Brown said that his major concern with the documentary is that while he was made to believe that the focus would be on his decision to change his course away from a life of gang violence, the documentary portrays him as a leader of perhaps Belize’s most notorious gang – George Street, which he claims he never was.
Brown said that he now fears for his life, because Kemp made him believe that the documentary was never going to be seen in Belize, and he now regrets that he said more than he should have on camera.
Addressing reports that Kemp gave money to people to participate in his project, Brown told Amandala that he merely got $500 – which he described as “sniping fees” – money he said was paid to friends for participating in Kemp’s project. Brown said Kemp had told him that when people from abroad see the documentary they will want to help Belize.
Now, Brown says that he regrets that more of the positive side of his discussions with Kemp was not showcased, and that he was instead made to appear as if he was a major player in the gang.
Public reaction to Kemp’s documentary has for the most part been regretful that Belize’s crime problem has been put out to international viewers with what they believe is so much exaggeration and sensationalism, but there are also very many people who feel that Kemp highlights a very real problem in Belize that needs urgent focus.
Still, there is overwhelming sentiment that damage has already been done to Belize’s image, and particularly to the tourism market. A young Belize City girl who watched the documentary on local TV Tuesday night echoed widespread concerns that the show would discourage people from coming to Belize, and that Kemp’s documentary has done more harm than good. Belize is a major tourist attraction, but there are fears from Belizeans in the tourism sector that Kemp describing the country as the 6th most likely place for someone to die by the gun, and Belize City, the cruise tourism port, as a place “on the verge of anarchy,” will only hurt an already challenged sector.
The documentary reveals that caught up in the illicit drug trade, facilitated sometimes by crooked security officers, are young boys and men – ages 14 to 24 – who not only continue to live poor, but at times wage a deadly war against their own peers. One member of Dog Pound Gang on the Southside of Belize City referred to losing 13 of his “boys” to gang warfare.
A police officer in the documentary confirmed that some of the drugs are cooked right inside the ghettos to make crack for local distribution and consumption. No mention was made of any of these drug houses or of the big dons who run the local networks being taken down.
Kemp makes a single reference to the big dons in the trade, saying that, “The people making the same money from the drugs trade don’t live in the same ghettoes as the gangs. They live in the more respectable parts of town for obvious reasons.”
Kemp tells the world that 37% of the cocaine smuggled into the US comes through Belize, feeding into a US$23 billion industry in which the still developing Belize is used as a major transshipment point for drugs from South America destined for the hungry North American market.
Belize is a refueling spot for drug runners who often come via high-powered Colombian boats and sometimes by private planes. Local players are paid with drugs and military weapons, including guns and grenades. These end up in our streets.
“We didn’t need a foreigner to tell us that the problem is real,” said Prime Minister Barrow.
“It clearly is bad for Belize,” he said, speaking on Ross Kemp on Gangs. “If this fellow had come down and did a straight investigative piece …I don’t know that we would have been in any position to feel so hard-done [by him],” Barrow added.
For his part, Jeffries comments that, “The Ross Kemp documentary has come at a bad time. It comes at a time when Belizeans who want to enjoy themselves are concerned, and it is in fact spreading. There is much information being shared regionally and internationally on this Ross Kemp documentary on Belize.
“In fact, we have known that Ross Kemp has been doing documentaries around the world, but for him to have had that opportunity to see and handle an explosive device in our streets and being assisted through the security forces and other agencies to come into Belize and to make this documentary and not telling us anything about it, until he left, and we learnt about it a lengthy period of time after he left, is I believe on his part disingenuous…
“In addition to that, it has come at a time when Belizeans are very much concerned about their safety and we are seeing where this matter of a grenade came at the heels of a time when one was exploded in our streets, others were held up, the matter with the Carnival, and it sort of incensed Belizeans. Belizeans are very much concerned.”
Even though he believes that some of the Belizean players went overboard to exaggerate things for Kemp’s camera, “There are some things that Ross Kemp’s video highlights that are real. It is almost a slander that is thrown at the police – go and deal with the big people, leave the small people alone. But it is difficult to convict the big people who are yes, well connected, well placed, well off, and in some cases the police are ill-equipped to deal with that type of interdiction, in terms of equipment, manpower, and integrity.”
He said that the Government is addressing street violence through a “360” turnaround program, which, he said, would be aimed at getting more of our young off the streets and away from a life of crime. He said that the plan entails a rethinking of intelligence strategy, new equipment, better crime and gun intervention, as well as collaboration with international agencies to address drugs and money laundering and other crime-related issues.
While the Ross Kemp documentary continues to be a central point of controversy and debate among Belizeans, the Belize Tourism Industry Association’s executive director, Andrew Godoy, says that there is a positive side to it: that it will now motivate Belizeans to redouble crime-fighting efforts to restore Belize’s good name.
He said that members have been discussing the impact of the documentary, and while they are sure it will cost them some serious tourism dollars, the crime and violence problem is not something Belizeans can afford to shy away from.
“There comes a time we have to put action where our mouth is,” said Godoy.
He told Amandala that the tourism stakeholders are discussing ways in which they would be able to work with government to develop both short and long term solutions, as the crime situation is a reality we keep shying away from.