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The power of the late community leader, aka 'don', William "Willie Haggart" Moore was in evidence at his funeral last week.Lloyd Williams, Senior Associate Editor
We need to take a real hard look - and at what better time than now - at the role of the "don" in the Jamaican society.
And we must determine for how long we are prepared to allow the tail to wag the dog, to admire the Emperor's new clothes, and sacrifice principle and morality and the "law and order" we like to speak so proprietorially about, on the altar of cheap popularity based on sheer criminality.
The dons, in case we did not know, account for the permanence and perpetuation of JLP and PNP garrison communities from Tivoli Gardens to Southside, from Arnett Gardens to Dunkirk.
The don is largely a phenomenon of the Corporate Area of Kingston and St. Andrew, although they can be found in Spanish Town, St. Catherine; in parts of Clarendon, and in a few other places. He is, for good or evil, the ranking leader in a community.
"There has never been a don whose antecedents included studying for the priesthood," says a veteran detective familiar with the inner-city communities which dons rule.
"The don is the most feared man in the community. A check on his background will show that he has a history of violence or crime here and abroad. But usually the cases here never go to trial, or if they do, prosecution witnesses have a tendency to disappear or develop a reluctance to give evidence."
Invariably, a long rap sheet haunts the don's resume. In many cases it involves serious felonies, including those which would attract capital punishment, if the law could only be applied impartially to him.
To quote the veteran cop: "No don has a spotless background. For him to maintain his donmanship, he has to be feared and this fear comes from his reputation as a bad man who can (with impunity), beat up or burn out or murder his enemies or people he sees as threats to him or order them punished - shot dead and their bodies tagged and placed in handcarts or crocus bags or both. His orders are carried out swiftly and unfailingly."
The drug man
But the don is not to be confused with the benevolent drug dealer, although he is sometimes one and the same person. Essentially, the drug man's interest is to keep his criminal enterprise going, protected and profitable, with the minimum of disruption from within or without the community. This drug man is more like the "Godfather" or the "Dads", respected because of his charity to the community and even sought at times for his counsel and his ability to settle minor disputes.
He sometimes has the influence to instil some measure of discipline and he will intervene and call on enforcers to step in to settle a dispute that could very well threaten his commerce.
But the dons, even as drug dealers, are a different kettle of rotten fish. They range from activists like the late Jim Brown, who would sling an M16 assault rifle over his shoulder and lead his "soldiers" to settle a dispute in Salt Lane, or "try" a case at Bump.
Some of the reigning dons are less hands-on, but no less ruthless. They order their trigger men to maim or murder. At least one boasts that he "runs" a certain police station from his mansion. Many use corrupt policemen as their monkey's paw. There are even some policemen who bodyguard dons.
Some dons are aided in their criminal activities by relatives and friends in high places. The conventional wisdom is that the vacuum which the dons now fill was created when the politicians could no longer find the money to hand out to their restive, jobless constituents to appease them. That's when the dons stepped in and consolidated their strangleholds.
A politician tells the story of putting on his usual treat for children in an inner-city community in his Corporate Area constituency. While he was taking out ice-cream, and sodas and balloons and fifes for the children from his vehicles, the don at a simultaneous treat, was handing out brand-name clothes and sneakers.
The politicians have run out of money. The dons are awash with money.
The don in recent years has become more independent of the politician, and correspondingly the politician has become more dependent on the don. The don is the politician's eyes and ears, taker of the pulse of the community, and who does just about anything the politician wants done there.
The politician depends on him for a variety of services; from provision and distribution of the largesse that eases the hurt of the people and keeps them off the back and in the voting slots of the politician, to helping to keep them in line and sustaining their loyalty to the politician and the party.
Undoubtedly, the politicians depend on them for support.
Debt
But the politician owes much more to the don. It is the don who more often than not controls the major public works programmes in the politician's constituency, he is the biggest funder of the politician's election campaigns.
And the don does much more than that. As the guardians of the most powerful and largest number of guns in the community, year round, he is the one who provides the politicians with the gunmen at election time to terrorise the other side and to vote out the polling stations in the garrison communities.
The don has many secrets for the politician. The politician is never comfortable with the term "don"; it reeks too much of ganja, and cocaine and guns (drugs and guns always go together) and rape and murder and other indictable crimes. The politician prefers the euphonious term "area leader".
But although the don is far more independent of Members of Parliament than in times past, there is no "don" who does not have a linkage to the politician. There is no don who is not aligned to the PNP or to the JLP.
"The politicians have legitimised the dons," says an intelligence source who has been observing donmanship and the inner cities for several years.
Criminal history
These are boys who have a criminal history. Although a lot of them have not been before the court, for one reason or the other, they are criminals in the widest sense of the word.
"They use fear, force and fraud to maintain themselves in power in a community. How can you have a man who is in charge of a community where the police can't go, soldiers can't go, public officials can't go, yet they are able to operate their businesses in the same community?
"What they have done," he said, "is to carve out little parts of the city for themselves. The questions to ask are: 'How come they acquire all of these businesses? How much did they pay for those businesses? What is the source of their wealth'?"
Answering the last question himself, he said one of the main sources of their wealth was drug trafficking.
"That is what usually gives them the push. Then to maintain themselves in power, they resort to corruption. Government contracts can't run in those areas unless they (the dons) are involved. But the question is how much of the money paid for those contracts is actually spent on the projects? These dons are used as a means of siphoning funds from the public purse.
"There is a symbiotic relationship between the dons and the politicians. The politicians can't run the area and get votes out of the areas unless the dons are there supporting them. They get a degree of legitimacy from the politicians so the police and officialdom are afraid to go near them, afraid to touch them because they know of their links to the top echelons of the political parties.
"The politicians should be made to answer what the real relationship is between them and the community leaders. They know what these political leaders do; they know how they came to power; they know how they maintain their power.
"The truth of the matter is that by their legitimization of the dons, the politicians have bought into and sanctioned all spheres of their criminal activities, be it murder, drug trafficking, or extortion." At the same time, he said, the dons have to link themselves to the politicians of either party to survive.
The legitimization of the dons is seen as another step in what some observers who are troubled by the developments, characterise as the "Colombian-ization of Jamaica". A senior police officer with vast experience, explains it this way:
"The dons set up enclaves and they are the law and order in those areas. They link up with other people in other countries and they control their enclaves. They can do anything they want in those enclaves. It's just like in Colombia where the guerrillas control little enclaves. These enclaves really are outlaw communities operating outside of the laws of the land. What to them is justice is criminal activities to people outside of those communities. The inner cities are not open to the rest of the society. You cannot conduct normal police work in those areas. You cannot go in there to investigate anything.
"For a start nobody is going to talk to you about certain things, especially if what is being investigated points to people at a certain level. A criminal wants to hide, he can go into the enclave and he is safe. Who is going to go in there and look for him? The organisations of state cannot maintain order in those areas yet they maintain order in those areas.
"If you study the crime statistics you will notice that certain crimes in those areas are not reported to the police, yet if you talk to residents of those areas you know that those crimes do occur there. The police would take too long to solve crimes like theft and rape in those areas. The dons can solve them."
As an example of the spreading lawlessness in areas controlled by dons, the source pointed to ganja branch and balls being sold openly every day in broad daylight at North Parade in the heart of downtown Kingston in obvious defiance of the Jamaica Constabulary.
"It might be easier for the don to stop it than for the police to do so," he said.
He concedes that sometimes "a little good can come out of the enclaves controlled by the dons on behalf of the politicians, but added, "It is 'good' in inverted commas."
If a businessman's truck was robbed in an area and he called the don, the don would get him back his goods and his truck, but he would have to pay for it.
Peace
He derided also the notion of "peace" said to be brokered by the dons between inner-city communities.
"Keeping an area quiet is when men from the other side don't come in and commit crimes. But they can do anything they want in those enclaves," he said.
There are some enclaves, he said, where men walked openly with guns and they are described as "soldiers" or protectors, or simply "men who guard the place."
"Illegal firearms are illegal, so why in those enclaves should men be walking openly with guns?"
He said drug trafficking, motor-car stealing and a lot of other criminal activities took place in those areas "and it is covered under the whole umbrella and the don, the man in charge, extracts a price. Whether from Government, whether from the private sector or from the ordinary citizen, money has to go up to him."
Sources point out that proverbial "scarce benefits" were even scarcer these days, but there was no poor don around. Some are quite wealthy from their cocaine and or ganja dealerships, past or active; from extortion, from lucrative state contracts and from legitimate businesses funded from these sources.
