Commissioner of Police says Jarod McKay fine for assault was ‘slap on the wrist;’ shrugs off contempt warning from defense attorneys

Published by BBNTEAM at October 1, 2024

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Posted: Tuesday, October 1, 2024. 4:29 pm CST.

By Aaron Humes: Jarod McKay, the 46-year-old Belizean-American who pleaded guilty to aggravated assault after he pushed the Commissioner of Police during the Orange Walk Carnival, was fined $1,500 by the Chief Magistrate mostly because it was his first offense. But Chester Williams isn’t happy about it.

Appearing on LOVE FM’s morning show last week, he told the hosts his version of events: “He was consuming alcohol from a Belikin bottle. I approached him very nicely and I said to him – you cannot consume alcohol in a bottle, and I reached to take the bottle away from him and when I did that, he pushed me away. When he pushed me away, I again said to him that he needed to give me the bottle, and this time he grabbed me in my shirt. And I had a nice piece of Rosewood in my hand, a baton, it weighs about 5 pounds, I held myself back, not to use it on him.”

Williams claimed McKay continued to be aggressive, holding to his shirt and saying, “I want him.” They were separated and McKay was arrested and charged.

The Commissioner argued that no police officer in uniform, senior or junior, should be treated that way, and had it happened in the States, ‘he would not be alive today.’

Williams then compared the treatment of McKay with that of his close cousin, Inspector Chris Martinez who the Chief Magistrate sent to prison: “But I am extremely dissatisfied with the outcome because here we have a situation where Inspector Martinez was charged for beating a person who was accused of shooting his house where his wife and children were and Martinez got five months. Now here you have a person who assaulted the Commissioner of Police while doing his job and he just got a slap on the wrist and said pay one thousand five and you go home. You’re saying to the public, the criminals per se, you beat the police, we will charge you a little money, send you home, but if the police touch you, we will send the police to jail. It’s like a double standard we can we can have that.”

That earned the ire of the Association of Defense Attorneys (ADA), who said the remarks about McKay and Martinez were ‘improper’ for an enrolled attorney, the most senior law enforcement official in the country, to make, and bordered on contempt of court.

The Commissioner hit back on Monday with another comparison: the de facto leader of the ADA, Richard “Dickie” Bradley, who complained in 2021 inter alia that ‘we’re bringing white judges to send black people to jail’. As he pointed out, no one said anything at the time, which implied that this was a double standard.

He added that while he respected the role of the ADA to ensure a fair justice system, the police must be respected for that system to work: “As the Commissioner of Police I have a responsibility, not just to myself but to the country and the officers that I lead and I maintain my position that the same way we’re saying to police officers don’t abuse the public because if you do you’re going to jail, the same way we must tell the public don’t abuse the police because if you do, you’re going to jail.”

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