BELIZE CITY, Mon. June 14, 2021– Today, the Commissioner of Police, Chester Williams, announced that Assistant Superintendent Fitzroy Yearwood would once again take charge of the Police Department’s media relations.
ASP Yearwood is no stranger to the cameras. He performed his duty as the Police Department’s Public Relations Officer for years before being ousted in early 2017.
“I have always been a media person, so to speak, and it is just coming back to what I love doing, to explain to the general public in a more palatable fashion as to things that may or affect their lives,” ASP Yearwood said in his first press briefing with the media.
And while some may call the change sudden, since the Commissioner of Police and the top brass of the department have been the primary point persons who have been providing information to the media for some years now, ASP Yearwood says he is simply returning to what he loves, and also giving the leadership of the Police Department room to do their investigative work, while he focuses on the dissemination of information.
“I will be the sole person, and yes, I have the necessary information to disseminate.” ASP Yearwood shared.
He added that the move is an effort to limit the number of persons in the department who will be addressing the media and to centralize that role of public dissemination of information. He noted, however, that in some instances the Police Commissioner will still address the media.
In August of 2017, then Inspector Yearwood was promptly transferred from his desk at the Police Press Office while he was on leave, after he had made a report on allegations concerning the potentially criminal actions of the Castro brothers (sons of former Minister of Transport and National Emergency Management, Edmond Castro). He stood by the contents of his report, despite those statements being deemed untrue by an unnamed Assistant Commissioner of Police, according to Yearwood. After his removal from the post, he stated publicly that he was being “thrown under the bus” by his department.
He was transferred to a desk job as a relief commander at the Queen Street Police Station. At the time, a number of threats of lawsuits were being made, but no such lawsuits materialized. ASP Yearwood remarked that he was willing to “go the full hundred yards, not nine yards, against them.”
ASP Yearwood has now returned to his previous post and will take on the task of passing on all police-related information to the public.
“Thanks for welcoming me back, and I hope that our relationship remains very strong and, of course, I am always available. I will be the sole person and, yes, I have the necessary information to disseminate. At the same time, to not jeopardize the investigations, we will just control what we believe needs to be known out there,” ASP Yearwood told members of the media.