by Charles Gladden

BELIZE CITY, Mon. Aug. 29, 2022

An amateur cell phone video that has been circulated among the public shows an apparent fight which took place on Saturday night between an unidentified civilian man and three on-duty police officers right in front of BTL Park.

In the first few seconds of the video, one of the three police officers can be seen landing a punch on the civilian, after which the civilian threw a punch at the police officer. That act of retaliation against the officer prompted two of his fellow officers to intervene, and they forcefully subdued the disorderly man and detained him.

While it is currently not known what led to the physical encounter between the civilian and the police officer, the Commissioner of Police, Chester Williams, told local reporters that this type of altercation is nothing new to members of the Police Department and that persons who record footage of such incidents tend to negatively portray police officers, without fully capturing the circumstances which prompted the officers’reactions.

“Certainly, you know it’s nothing new to policing. Oftentimes, officers encounter resistance when trying to take persons into custody, and many times, the videographer would not capture what the civilian would do but capture the police or on occasion would edit the video to make it seem like the police are the bad one. This time, we saw a video that depicts everything. It’s an eye-opener for the public to understand it is extremely difficult for officers at times when trying to detain some persons. Yes, there are occasions where some people would easily concede to being arrested, but there are occasions we do have resistance and the police have to apply the best possible measure to deal with the situation without causing any injury to a person or persons,” Commissioner Williams said.

Charges are yet to be levied against the civilian for resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer.