by Marco Lopez

During my time working in television and live production, we implemented a system called the “idiot check” to ensure useful gear and equipment are not lost or left on set after a long, tiring production day. Listen, 12 to 15 hours of straight work for any human being will wear you down, physically, mentally, and emotionally. This is why the idiot check was always implemented, you see, to ensure that a system was in place that would ensure that even at that low point, we could still get the job done, because, God knows, getting the equipment back to the studio safe and sound is just as important as delivering the production. Now, it’s called an “idiot check” because the person lucky to be assigned the task (I’d oftentimes assigned myself) would really look like an idiot walking around a pretty much empty set with their heads down looking for God knows what.

That idiot, however, would oftentimes turn out to be a hero, finding mic wire left at the back of somewhere, or even a damn camera bag, with lens and memory cards containing footage of the day’s shoot. Really important stuff to be left behind — forgotten.

But what are these trivialities compared to a life? A living, breathing human being, forgotten. My heart goes out to the family of Derrick Uh, and writing this piece, 3:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning, feeling a strange kind of guilt for enjoying the cool of the rain falling, I could only imagine what Derrick was going through at 3:30 a.m. on Sunday morning. See, I suppose that was when he started to lose his breath, and woke up from the heat, a couple of hours after the police van was parked and turned off, and I’m here thinking he must have been out cold to not have called out to that officer who slammed his door shut and walked off. He probably woke up from the heat and stifling and made noise, but who would hear anything at that time in the morning? Surely not the officers at the Corozal police station enjoying a 4:00 a.m. siesta.

Hell, the officer or officers who took the van back to the police station must have been out cold themselves, operating in total zombie mode maybe, but I suppose 1 officer could forget; now 6? I’m not sure. And what happened to the muscle memory?

For any officer, it should be second nature to take a detainee into the cell block. The COMPOL, who has been very candid in his communication on the tragedy, has said clearly that the driver of the police van from the San Joaquin Festival to the Corozal police station is making it seem that he did not know someone was in the back. But others are saying that he did have knowledge. It would be the worst thing to lie at this point; either way, the life of a young, vibrant man was lost in the most torturous of ways, and even if it’s a mistake, you have to own up to it.

Minister of HomeAffairs, Hon. Kareem Musa, said 12 statements were taken, and 6 officers are being questioned; a criminal tribunal will be held inside the Police Department, and criminal charges are also expected to be levied. It’s an okay start; I just can’t knock this feeling that whatever will happen won’t be enough. Surely won’t bring back Derrick Uh; that pain will remain nationally, and more profoundly so for the family — but with that pain, a certain type of fear, that somehow you and I could be locked up and forgotten, just as Derrick was.

Firing the cops and charging them for manslaughter is a step, but is that justice? The COMPOL said he would recommend that the Ministry concede to any demand for compensation by the family, but the precedent, about say, a quarter million dollars max, ain’t much, and won’t mend the trauma caused to the family and the community – the nation. Again, is that justice?

Whatever happens, the only way we could regain at least a sliver of hope in the police is if we see systems put in place to prevent these and other tragedies from reoccurring. The death of loved ones in police custody has hit many families in Belize to the core. A higher duty of care must be exercised by the department and officers to ensure the preservation of life. The regimes being utilized today are a failure. It’s been proven over and over.

Derrick is being buried today, Wednesday, August 17, at 9:00 a.m., at the Cristo Rey Pentecostal Church. My deepest condolences to the family and friends of Derrick Uh. May he rest in peace.