BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Dec. 16, 2021– After Assistant Commissioner of Police Marco Vidal was placed on suspension pending an assessment of his “administrative failures”, the Minister of Home Affairs, Hon. Kareem Musa, was asked whether the Commissioner of Police, Chester Williams, should be subject to an inquiry as a result of illicit operations that were found to be taking place within the Police Department.
Minister Musa, also a seasoned attorney, does not think so. In commenting on the involvement of four of the officers on ACP Vidal’s Commander of Operations Strike Team (COST) in a recent drug plane landing and also unsanctioned use by the team of certain public assets, Musa noted that ACP Vidal “had a lot of free rein” — which decreased Commissioner Williams’ direct oversight of (and responsibility for) what took place. “At some point, you have to delegate, and in this instance, that delegation is ACP Vidal. And so, there may have been, like I said, administrative failures by him, by ACP Vidal, but I don’t think that falls on the Commissioner to know at any given point in time, he has to know where two thousand two hundred police officers are,” Hon. Musa said.
He went on to state that it is impractical to expect one man, the Commissioner of Police, to micromanage the over 2,000 police officers within the department. For this reason, senior officers are assigned control of their own regions and units. This delegation of powers is provided for in Section 23 of the Police Act.
During his remarks concerning the suspension of ACP Vidal, Musa said that so far the investigation has shown administrative failure on Vidal’s part and also indicated that he did not have general knowledge of the activities in which members of his team were involved. He further went on to say that these may be sufficient grounds for dismissing Vidal, but that would be dependent on the findings from the investigations.
“One has to admit that this particular unit of the department was doing a lot of busts. So while it is that there appears to be some other mischief that they were up to, they did have a lot of free rein – as I think you are trying to insinuate – they did have a lot of free rein because of the type of operations that they were engaged in. Regretfully, they have taken advantage of that free rein in my opinion and allegedly, and so we’ll just have to wait to see the outcome of the trial,” Hon. Musa further pointed out.
The four rogue officers — Sergeant George Ferguson, Corporal Elmer Nah, Corporal Delwin Casimiro, and PC Nelson Middleton — have received bail following their arrest and are interdicted pending the outcome of the trial for their alleged role in facilitating a drug plane landing which took place near Bladen Village in Toledo on November 4.
While Belize’s Commissioner of Police will not be subject to any inquiry into his role as leader of the department in which these rogue cops were operating, it is interesting to note that chapter 88 of the UK’s Police Act outlines that the “Police Chief is vicariously liable for any wrongdoings by their constables in the course of their employment.” This principle is applied more commonly to civil cases, however.