By Claude Mills, Staff ReporterTHE HIGHLY mobile and ruthless gang 'Gideon Warriors', allegedly headed by Joel Andem, is fast gaining notoriety as it tightens its grip on the business community in rural St. Andrew.
According to the Gordon Town police, "A year-and-a-half ago, the Gideon Warriors numbered 48 'soldiers' who were highly mobile and ruthless who took orders from a boss they did not often see."
"A lot of young men aspire to be a part of the gang because that way they belong to something. They see Andem as a hero, he is more than just a criminal to them, they respect him, and take instructions from him," a policeman from the Gordon Town Police Station, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.
"I believe that the number must have moved well beyond 48 by now, because he has support in a lot of places," he said.
According to intelligence, the Gideon Warriors crime syndicate comprises underworld figures who hail from depressed areas of Gordon Town, such as Industry Village, Gail Mount, Cooperidge, Cottage Hill, Wiltshire, Penfield and Maryland.
"These areas have a lot of young 'soldiers' who are sympathetic to the order," the policeman said.
Gail Mount is home to a popular charismatic community leader known only as 'Dud', while Cottage Hill is the hilly redoubt of a man known only as 'Thready'. Still, while his core support remains in Gordon Town, 'soldiers' are recruited from a wide variety of areas which stretch as far as depressed areas in the St. Andrew Central Police Division such as Papine, Mona Commons, Tavern and Kintyre.
Gordon Town forms the hub of the gang's wide-ranging criminal activities, which include racketeering, extortion, murder and kidnapping.
"These Gideon Warriors don't fire shots after the police, there are no reports of rapes or shootings up here, things are quiet except for one or two incidents," the policeman said.
One of those incidents include the murder of Conrad Brown, a security guard accused of making off with $17 million from his colleagues in Trelawny in April 2002. He was killed in Gordon Town allegedly by cronies he had given part of the loot for safe keeping.
