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Jamaica’s ‘Resilience 3’ Operation Aimed At Combating Crime Since The Arrest Of The Country’s Most Powerful Crime Boss Dudus Coke

The following editorial was posted on the Jamaica Gleaner and discusses the Jamaican government’s attempts to take back the streets of Kingston from criminals.

Since the bloody manhunt and conviction of Christopher Dudus Coke, government officials have vowed to clean up the streets of West Kingston which have been overtaken by gangs and drug activity.

Jamaica Defense Force launches Operation Resilience 3 to combat gang and drug activity in downtown Kingston.

Via Jamaica Gleaner:

It may have expired by now, but over the past several days, the police in the downtown/western Kingston area of the Jamaican capital have been engaged in an operation they call Resilience 3. They have had help from the Jamaica Defence Force.

The effort, according to Senior Superintendent Steve McGregor, the head of the Kingston West Police Division, is aimed at “intensifying the pressure on criminals operating in downtown, especially in the market district”. In others words, the security authorities felt that there was need for something dramatic to confront, and hopefully contain, the epidemic of extortion and violent criminality that has resurged in the western section of the city since the time, four years ago, in the aftermath of the Tivoli Gardens operation, when people felt that Jamaica, finally, was coming to grips with the problem.

The incursion into Tivoli Gardens to arrest, for extradition, the drug lord/gangster, Christopher Coke, proved to be a violent affair. More than 70 civilians were killed, although it is claimed that many of them did not die in gunfights and might have been victims of extrajudicial killings.

Shift in crime dynamics

What is clear is that the dislodgement of Coke, the country’s top crime boss, and the psychological impact of degrading his Tivoli Gardens redoubt, for a time, shifted the dynamic of crime in Jamaica. Although – at a 45 per 100,000 population – our murder rate remained extraordinarily high review, the actual number of murders declined by a third.

It is true, too, that during Coke’s iron-grip rein, there were, despite its reputation as a haven for hard men of violence, few murders in west Kingston. And there was a kind of ‘order’ to the extortion business downtown. With his departure, the law-enforcement authorities seemed to have regained control of a previously ungoverned part of the city. The extortionists disappeared.

During those early, heady days, there was a fair bit of chest-beating by the authorities, including the police, and the rest of the society was optimistic. We had hoped that west Kingston/downtown’s small geographical areas, would be sustainable models of crime management and a template for the rest of Jamaica’s high crime communities. It hasn’t held.

Four per cent increase in murders

Last year, the number of murders in Jamaica increased by four per cent, to more than 1,200. But more significant is what is happening in west Kingston. There is a factional fight among gangsters for turf. In 2014, up to the third week of May, there were already 36 murders in the division – an increase of 36 per cent. The extortionists are back in force downtown, without the old central command and control.

In a sense, Resilience 3 is an admittance by the authorities that they have lost the plot on post-Coke downtown/west Kingston. They can no longer deny the presence of the extortionists. And that has implications for crime in the wider Jamaica, to which the environment upon which containment and the possibility transformation, initially achieved in Tivoli/west Kingston, was not extended.

For example, an absence of consensus, and in the case of the current security minister, active opposition, contributed to the collapse of a state of emergency that helped to create that environment. Since then, there have been fine words and pretty documents. Hard achievements are few.

High Ranking Member Of The Memphis Based Craig Petties Drug Organization Serving A 37 Year Prison Sentence

Via Memphis Daily News– Demetrius Fields, a high ranking member of the Craig Petties drug organization, drew the longest jail term of those convicted in the largest drug case ever brought in Memphis federal court.

Memphis Federal Court Judge Samuel “Hardy” Mays sentenced Fields to 37 years in prison on one count of racketeering conspiracy, one count of drug conspiracy and one count of money laundering.

Fields entered a guilty plea to the charges in October 2011 and testified at the trial last year of Clinton Lewis and Martin Lewis, the only two charged in the case who went to trial. They were convicted of racketeering and drug conspiracy charges as well as murder for hire and are awaiting sentencing.

Federal prosecutors did not recommend a reduced sentence for Fields despite his testimony because shortly after the trial he was suspected of trying to have a kilogram of cocaine delivered to the federal prison in Mason, Tenn. where he is a prisoner.

Fields has denied the allegation and faces no criminal charges in connection with the arrest and indictment of Tamara Strickland.

Strickland told police and federal investigators that Fields himself called her on a cell phone from the prison to arrange the delivery. Two other members of the Petties organization at Mason were also written up for disciplinary action after guards found they had cell phones.

Weighing against Fields was an extensive criminal history as well as his role in the organization.

“He was a leader in this organization … in charge of a number of the more violent activities,” Mays said of Fields. “He was deeply involved in this organization and some of its most violent activities.”

Added to the factors used to formulate a sentencing guideline were several points against Fields for obstruction of justice. Fields cooperated and testified for a day and a half during the 2012 trial. But he got points for obstruction of justice in the sentencing formula because he helped plan the murders of potential witnesses against the organization specifically to keep them from talking.

Also considered by Mays was the value of Fields’ testimony.

“Mr. Fields’ testimony was very valuable but was not essential,” Mays concluded as he weighed the seriousness of the offenses.

He drove codefendant Clarence Broady to the Memphis home of Mario Stewart so Broady could kill Stewart. Broady and Fields testified that as Broady waited in Stewart’s carport for him to come out of the house, Fields waited at a nearby park and fell asleep.

Mays sentenced Broady to 31 years in prison for specifically for carrying out three of the six murders that are part of the narrative of the case and participating in a fourth.

While Broady was a “contract killer” for the organization, Fields was involved in the planning of the murders and initiating them on orders from Petties who fled to Mexico in 2002 and ran the organization until his capture in 2008.

Petties pleaded guilty in 2009 in a closed hearing and is awaiting sentencing.

Fields participated from 2004 to 2008 in running the network of stash houses in the city where drug supplies were kept as well as shipments of millions of dollars each to Mexico where the drugs came from.

Fields said nothing as Mays sentenced him on the second day of a two-day hearing. During the Thursday hearing, Mays apologized for his actions and said he regretted them.

“You made some horrible choices in your life,” Mays told Fields at the end of the hearing. “But you’ve recently made some good choices,” he added referring to Fields’ decision to cooperate and testify as well as seek drug rehabilitation treatment while in prison.

Co-defendant Bobby Cole was sentenced to eight years and one month in prison by Mays in October for the role he played in the last two years of the organization, shipping millions of dollars to Mexico as tons of cocaine and marijuana where shipped from Mexico into Memphis via tractor-trailer rigs for distribution here and in several states.