Signs marking territory within Tivoli Gardens community once ruled by The Shower Posse/ Christopher Dudus Coke. Photo: Christopher Edmonds
The chairman of the Tivoli Commission of Enquiry, Sir David Simmons made his first stop of the tour in Rasta City, an area of the Tivoli Gardens community.
Local residents there openly complained that police officers conducting the tour were not taking the chairman to the right areas of the community.
They told Simmons that Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke left the community about 10:00 am on May 24, 2010 and then the police entered the community, firing shots at residents without justification.
The chairman was then taken through a hole in a wall where residents showed him areas where alleged police abuse took place and homes were severely damaged during the incursion.
The Commission of Enquiry visited Tivoli Gardens on Friday as part of its probe into the operation of May 2010 to apprehend then don Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke. The announcement was made on Tuesday by Commission Chairman Sir David Simmons.
The bus departed the Jamaica Conference Centre in downtown Kingston at 9:30 am for Tivoli Gardens. The tour ran for roughly 3 hrs.
The tour route included most of the sites mentioned during the enquiry.
Tivoli Gardens is a garrison community located in West Kingston and is the birthplace and former ruling grounds of the Jamaican drug lord.
The former Commissioner of Police testified that the crime that took place in other communities across Jamaica also occurred in the Tivoli Gardens community.
Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington yesterday gave the Tivoli Gardens Commission of Enquiry further insight into the power of the Presidential Click led by Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke.
Ellington — who was responding to questions from attorney Alexander Williams, who is representing several Tivoli Gardens residents — said that the police never gave up on reaching out to the residents of the West Kingston community.
He said that an attempt was made to start a youth club there in the early 2000s, but the plan was resisted by the Presidential Click.
Ellington said that the club was eventually formed, but with the compromise that it be named after the criminal gang.
He said that after the 2010 operation to apprehend Coke, who was wanted in the United States on drugs and gunrunning charges, the club was relaunched and renamed the Tivoli Gardens Police Youth Club.
The former top cop said the police were then able to run the club as they do the other police youth clubs across the island.
During the afternoon session, Ellington — in a testy exchange with Independent Commission of Investigation (INDECOM) boss Terrence Williams — said that he wasn’t pleased with the compromise that was made.
He said the name Presidential Click was associated with a criminal organization and to brand the group like that would be like supporting the gang.
Earlier, during the morning session, the former top cop testified that the crime that took place in other communities across Jamaica also occurred in Tivoli Gardens.
He said, however, that the police were prevented by criminals from accessing the community to investigate these crimes, which included murders. He added that criminals there enforced a code of silence that made it impossible for crimes committed in the community to be investigated.
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