By Khaila Gentle

BELIZE CITY, Mon. May. 9, 2022

After five months of being suspended for negligence and administrative failures during his time as head of the Police Department’s Commander Operations Strike Team (COST), Assistant Commissioner of Police Marco Vidal will be retiring early. According to reports, the Belize Police Department, after consulting with Vidal’s attorney, has accepted the former Commander of Operations’ submitted papers for early retirement. This comes on the heels of an internal investigation of Vidal following last year’s arrest of four of his former subordinates in connection with a drug plane landing. 

“The investigation specifically into ACP Vidal’s involvement or non-involvement in the drug plane landing, there was nothing that was uncovered in that investigation, but I can confirm that we are in talks with his attorney-at-law to have him go on early retirement,” Minister of Home Affairs, Hon. Kareem Musa told local media last week.

According to Musa, while there was no criminal wrongdoing uncovered during the investigation, the retirement of Vidal is what’s best for the Police Department.

When questioned about the optics of such a high-ranking officer receiving a retirement package, rather than a dismissal, which had once been raised as a possibility depending on the investigation’s outcome, the Minister of Home Affairs made the following statement:

“I do believe that it is important for the morale of the department as well as the morale of the Belizean population, because while it is that they may feel that there was some involvement of ACP, in this particular instance you need concrete proof at the end of the day. And so, we have done our part, and again it is a decision that we are making in terms of boosting the morale of not just the department but of the population when it comes to this particular case, so it’s not a reward…,” he stated.

“If we were to leave the ACP in his position in the department as such a high-ranking officer, what would the morale be in an instance like that?” he added.

Commissioner of Police Chester Williams spoke with local media about the matter recently, stating that the only thing uncovered during the investigation of Vidal was “administrative failures” on his part.

“When you read the public service or the constitutional public service regulations which deals with the disciplining of public officers, it says that when it comes to a minor infraction that [for] the first one the officer should be written to and not per se take direct disciplinary action against the individual. The infraction that was uncovered would amount to a minor infraction not a major one,” said Williams.

The investigation by the Anti-Narcotics Unit found nothing that implicated Vidal—or any other former member of the strike team apart from those who were arrested—in any wrongdoing. It did, however, find Vidal, who once held the third highest position in the Police Department, guilty of administrative failures related to a lack of accountability. 

The former Commander of Operations and head of COST was suspended in December of last year following the arrest of four of his subordinates in connection with the landing of a drug plane near Bladen Village in the Toledo District on November 4, 2021. At the time, the Commissioner of Police explained that the fate of Vidal’s career—whether he would be dismissed or not—depended on the outcome of the then ongoing internal investigation. It was stated that the main reason for his suspension was to ensure there was no interference in that investigation.

In regards to Vidal’s purported administrative failures, it had been reported that the former senior officer had failed to keep check of his team members’ activities. Investigations had found that several vehicles that were being used daily by Vidal’s team had not been acquired using the required protocols. There had also been failure to account for the usage of ammunition handed out to COST members for their daily operations. Notably, some rounds of that ammunition were reported to have been found at the scene of the drug plane landing back in November.

“We have seen where, as the Commander of Operations and the person who was in charge of the COST team, that he [Vidal] could have done certain things to prevent what happened and he did not. So administratively, he will be held accountable for those,” Police Commissioner Chester Williams had explained at a police press conference prior to Vidal’s suspension.

During his interview with local media last week, The Commissioner did note, however, that one could not blame the issuing officer for what the members of the strike team did with the ammunition they were equipped with, highlighting the fact that strike team members often have large quantities of ammunition due to the uncertainty of the nature of their work.

“The issuance of those ammunitions could easily be justified. Yes, it shows now in hindsight that perhaps they were using it for the wrong reason. But the issuing officer at that time would not know, so we can’t kill di man for that,” he said.