Jamaican Gangsters – Page 14 – The Pen Hustle With Brandy Cavalli

Tivoli Enquiry Begins; Examines Police Incursion Into The West Kingston Community Of Tivoli Gardens

A Commission of Enquiry has begun to look into the circumstances that led to the deaths of 70 people during a joint police-military operation in Kingston, Jamaica in May 2010.

The enquiry, which began on December 1, will hear from over 500 witnesses over a three-month period. The commission chairman and former Barbados Attorney-General, Sir David Simmons, and two other justices will determine, among other things, whether security forces used excessive measures during an incursion into the West Kingston community of Tivoli Gardens – a depressed inner-city slum which was the stronghold of convicted gangster Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke.

The killings occurred over a four-day period in May 2010 after the government led by former Prime Minister Bruce Golding declared a State of Emergency to allow the police and the military to execute a warrant for Coke’s arrest. Coke was subsequently extradited to the United States, where he is currently serving a 23-year sentence.

During the first week of testimony at the enquiry, eight residents of West Kingston gave various accounts of being beaten and shot at by soldiers or police officers. Several witnesses described being denied the opportunity to seek medical care for their injuries and alleged that the security forces damaged valuable property as they sought to learn Coke’s whereabouts.

The commission has already seen fiery exchanges, most notably between Convenor of the Tivoli Committee, Lloyd D’Aguilar, and Sir David. Mr. D’Aguilar was evicted from the Jamaica Conference Centre on the second day of the enquiry and barred for the duration of the proceedings after he engaged in a verbal tirade with the commission chairman, calling him a ‘political hack’ and ‘an enemy of the people of Tivoli Gardens”.

In the meantime, after several testy interactions between witnesses and lawyers representing the police and the military, the Office of the Public Defender, which represents most of the civilian witnesses, says it will consider debriefing the witnesses after giving testimony.

Included in the Terms of Reference for the commissioners is to examine the conduct of operations by the security forces in Tivoli Gardens and look into allegations that persons were especially armed to repel any law enforcement effort to capture the fugitive Christopher “Dudus” Coke.

The enquiry is also seeking to determine what arrangements were made, and what precautions were taken, to protect citizens in Tivoli Gardens and other affected areas from unnecessary injury or property damage during the State of Emergency.

Alleged Shower Posse Lieutenant Of ‘Dudus Coke’ Killed In Daylight Mob Hit

Jamaican authorities are probing the brazen daylight murder of a man on the outskirts of New Kingston say they have received new information suggesting that the victim — Collin Mann — was a lieutenant of former Tivoli Gardens don Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke.

Mann, also called ‘Gummy Bear’, was slapped with shooting and gun-related charges in 2013 stemming from allegations that he fired at police at the Denham Town Police Station in May 2010 when the security forces conducted an operation in Tivoli Gardens to arrest Coke, who was wanted by the United States Government. Continue reading “Alleged Shower Posse Lieutenant Of ‘Dudus Coke’ Killed In Daylight Mob Hit”

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.