Robert Buddan
COULD THE killing of 'Bulbie' Bennett last week be the tipping point in the fight against crime in Jamaica? Bennett was Jamaica's most wanted. He wished to be Jamaica's number one Don. In fact, he became the country's number one parasite. There is no glory in his murderous ways. His death, Heather Robinson has said, marked a "blessed day". It could be an even more blessed day if it leads to the dismantling of gangs in Spanish Town and a big reversal of crime in the dangerous Spanish Town-May Pen corridor and crime in general.
It might be optimism or hope, but it would be a blessed time indeed if the present police momentum snowballs into even greater successes for Operation Kingfish as it targets gang leaders and disrupts their clandestine networks and operations. Crime is transnational but if the local branch plants and headquarters of these multinational enterprises face a harsh market, they will have to close down or take their business elsewhere.
It will not be lost on Jamaicans that Bennett was leader of the Clansmen, a gang claiming association with the PNP. The fact that another self-proclaimed PNP Don, Zeeks of Mathews Lane, is in jail and was denied bail again, is significant too. Such importance did Zeeks ascribe to himself that he thought he could be a political kingmaker, declaring his support for Peter Phillips as PNP president. It did not work. Claiming partisan credentials does not provide safe haven.
Peter Phillips had already declared this and the parties have signed a political code of conduct to confirm it. After the police-military raid on Tivoli Gardens, Bruce Golding made it clear that the police have a right to go after gunmen wherever they are and Tivoli was no exception. This is the first such announcement by the JLP in forty years. Could these recent declarations amount to another tipping point, that of the perception that politicians fuel crime? No political party will get the respect it craves if this perception is not changed by consistent and constant action.
DOCUMENTING POLITICS
AND CRIME
The charge of political connection with violence goes back a long time, but it has never been properly documented. The first documented claim came from Terry Lacy's book, Violence and Politics in Jamaica (1977). It sought to explain the emerging violence of Kingston's underclass in the 1960s, the perpetrators then being known quaintly as 'rude boys'.
Lacy did not single out one party but he was clear that following the West Kingston violence of 1996/7, Mr. Seaga had depicted the police force as favouring the PNP. Lacy said that from then West Kingston emerged as a protected breeding ground for criminality and Mr. Seaga's stigmatisation had made policing a politically sensitive matter ever since.
It was many years before another more narrative form of documentation emerged. Laurie Gunst's Born Fi Dead (1995) emerged at a time when the Kingston rude boys had mutated into an even more dangerous social disease, the notorious transnational Jamaican posses of the 1980s. Again, neither party was spared but the finger pointed clearly at the West Kingston origins of crime and political violence and its migration overseas. A few more years were to pass before other kinds of studies emerged. Tony Harriot of the department of government, UWI studied the anti-social character and dysfunctionalities of the Jamaican police force at a time when police reforms became topical and necessary. Obika Gray produced a study in which a culture of badness and honour explained violence and resistance to what he saw as the predatory Jamaican state.
Only one study sponsored by the Ministry of National Security actually focused on modern gangs in Jamaica. Donna Moncrieffe found that of the 49 gangs in Jamaica at the turn of the century, 14 per cent were highly organised. They were involved in international drug running, protection and extortion rackets, and work contracts, among other trades. Don Robotham (in a paper for the National Planning Council) argued that the important situational factors that made crime successful were the availability of guns, and collusion by the state, political parties, the police, and the private sector.
We are in a better position to understand crime and violence in Jamaica now than before. The Criminal Reform Unit of the Ministry of National Security and Tony Harriot's work on criminal justice systems in the department of government, UWI, provide a good basis for this. We now need to build on the bland crime statistics and the socio-economic and political background studies. We need to continue moving in the direction of building a modern policing infrastructure and understanding gangs and how they exploit situational conditions. We must go beyond mapping gang activity to hard policing and the immediate capture of gang leaders and the dismantling of their outfits.
POLITICIANS AGAINST CRIME
As criminals, police, media, and business associations claim a link between politicians and crime, politicians must now declare and prove that they are against crime and violence. As long ago as 1993, Portia Simpson Miller demanded that the public stop making unsubstantiated claims that politicians were distributing guns to gunmen and name those politicians. At that time too, K.D. Knight, then Minister of National Security, called upon the public to report any case where politicians were interfering in the work of the police. No one has named names.
Crime Stop has claimed great success in anonymous tips leading to the arrest of gunmen. Anonymous tips about politicians can be provided as well. Mark Shields has an open line. No one has said that politicians interfere with his work or that he is partisan. To my knowledge, no criminal has even confessed to the police that he received guns or was directed in his activities by a politician, not even as a bargain for lighter charges. The spate of arrests of posse members and 'yardies' by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Scotland Yard has yielded no such revelation either. We are still not able to separate public talk from documented proof.
Politicians have not done enough to clear the air either. It is not enough to complain of political bias if one declares Tivoli to be the mother of all garrisons. It is not enough for the PNP to belatedly say it has no association with the Clansmen after failing to respond to numerous media reports of such an association. We must take up Mrs. Simpson Miller's invitation to name the politicians, and we must follow through on Sharon Hay-Webster's demand that the police supply proof of her (or any PNP) connection with the Clansmen.
If we believe that Jamaican politicians won't say they are in league with criminals and the Jamaican police is in collusion with politicians then let us ask the police in the U.K., U.S., Canada and wherever else to go to their files and report to our police the names of any current Member of Parliament for which they have evidence of involvement in crime or with criminals. At some point, we need to clear up this matter so that we can focus on the criminals themselves. We must get past this dancing around so that we can focus on the people who are shooting and killing children, women, policemen and priests. Then we will be able to celebrate with Heather Robinson many blessed days ahead.
Email the Department of Government at: Robert.Buddan@uwimona.edu.jm
