A MEMBER of the police high command is pointing to the failure of the political directorate to introduce plea-bargaining legislation as one of the factors affecting the ability of law-enforcement agencies to break the back of criminal gangs.

With an estimated 180 vicious criminal gangs operating across the island, the police are looking for any tool possible to deal with this monster which is linked to 60 per cent of the gun murders in the Kingston Metropolitan Region.

The gangsters have taken control of several communities with their high-powered weapons and brutal lifestyle.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington says efforts by the law-enforcement agencies to take back these communities and dismantle the gangs need the support of the public and lawmakers.

Police division unprepared

According to Ellington, organised gangs are swamping law-enforcement agencies and the judicial system.

"If you have three or four gangs operating in one police division it sucks the resources of that division," Ellington told journalists at a briefing yesterday afternoon.

He argued that the way to dismantle these gangs was to hit them hard by disrupting the criminal enterprises such as drug dealing and extortion.

However, Ellington argued that this would have to be supported by plea-bargaining legislation, speedy trials and long sentences for those found guilty.

"If we have plea-bargaining, every gangster would want to be the one caught first because he would be the only one who would be allowed to plead and get a lighter sentence," he said.

"If we had plea-bargaining we would not need to infiltrate gangs. All we would need to do is arrest one and get that arrested gangster on our side," added Ellington.

The police have long called for the introduction of plea-bargaining and, in November 2005, the Senate passed the Criminal Justice (Plea Negotiations and Agreements) Act to pave the way for the implementation of structured plea-bargaining.

That came five years after the Washington-based Police Executive Research Forum report first made the plea-bar-gaining recom-mendation to the Jamaican Government.

However, since then the legislation has stalled as it awaits the necessary regulations.