A Kingston kickabout: but the capital’s inner-city neighbourhoods are not always so peaceful
Beneath the gnarled limbs of an acacia tree offering shade from the broiling Caribbean sun, Jaycee holds court among a group of youths. They sit lazily on a low, graffiti-daubed wall, at the end of a dusty street lined by rusty corrugated-iron fences. Beyond the fences lie cramped, rudimentary shacks. The scent of marijuana infuses the air. Yet the sleepy atmosphere belies the war that is fought when night descends. Youths kill, and are killed, for the right to call this ramshackle street their own.
This is Jaycee’s fiefdom. (His name has been changed to protect his identity.) At just 20, wearing baggy jeans, his hair in corn-rows and his face scarred from a reform-school knife brawl, you wouldn’t know he is a “don,” or community leader, who commands maximum respect in his neighbourhood. Aside from providing for the 100 or so local families in hard times, and dispensing justice as the only law in the area, Jaycee says he controls 20 gunmen—known as “shottas”—who will both live and die for him. In a quiet moment in our conversation, he tells me: “I sit and pray every night I won’t die on the battlefield.”
In May last year Jamaica erupted in civil unrest and 76 people were killed as government forces stormed inner-city Kingston to capture the “don of dons”, Christopher “Dudus” Coke. He now awaits trial in the US, accused of gun-running and trafficking drugs through—it is alleged by law enforcement—a gang called the Shower Posse, so-called because they rain bullets down on their rivals. Dudus denies all charges.
During the struggle to capture Dudus, the world’s media disseminated images of gunmen battling police and soldiers from behind explosive-rigged barricades. On face value, it looked like a product of the vicious drugs war being waged across the Caribbean, spiralling out from Mexico and Colombia. Jamaica has long had one of the highest murder rates in the world (1,430 people were killed in 2010). Now its police force is gaining notoriety as one of the most deadly, with one in five killings allegedly carried out by the security forces, according to the NGO Jamaicans for Justice.
Yet the root cause of the unceasing cycle of violence in Kingston is not drugs but sectarianism stoked by politicians—from the ruling Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) and the opposition People’s National Party (PNP). In the 1970s, both parties armed inner-city communities loyal to them against other neighborhoods known as “garrisons.” The dons and the politicians have a symbiotic relationship: the dons get the vote out, and in turn receive patronage from some politicians on everything from building contracts, money to fix roads or simply providing amenities. Until recently, the “mother of all garrisons” was the neighbourhood of Tivoli Gardens, run by Dudus. The MP for Tivoli Gardens is Jamaica’s prime minister, Bruce Golding. He initially resisted Dudus’s extradition, but after the US stepped up pressure he ordered the security forces into Tivoli.
“I suppose the only place you could equate it to, with the violence, would be Northern Ireland,” says assistant police commissioner Justin Felice, head of the Jamaican police’s anti-corruption bureau. He was appointed after a spell in the police ombudsman’s office in Northern Ireland, where he helped to reform the police into a force that reflected both Catholic and Protestant communities. Jamaica’s similarities to Northern Ireland are startling—right down to the parties’ colours. “I arrived here on election day in 2007 and all these orange and green flags are flying,” recalls Felice. “I thought: have they got those up for me? And then I heard gunshots ringing out.”
Even the police think carefully before entering a rival area, and within the garrisons there is no democracy. To vote against the MP supported by the don of the area can mean not only expulsion from your home but, in some cases, a death sentence.
What can be done? Felice advocates an independent anti-corruption tsar. But given the power that dons wield in their communities, he also advocates talking with them in an attempt to forge a peace. Without such measures, the situation can only get worse: the removal of Dudus, who kept some semblance of order in a state where the government has failed to, has left a vacuum—and the potential for more violence as smaller dons battle for control.
Jaycee’s neighbourhood is one of the frontlines. His brother was a local don who was shot dead by a gunman several streets over, under the direction of someone in New York. In this case, the killers didn’t stop with Jaycee’s brother. A few days later they murdered a witness, a close relative who had seen the killing. Jaycee says he had no choice but to pick up his brother’s guns and protect the community. Knowing the power and loyalty that Jaycee now wields, politicians come to him offering favours in return for his help. But Jaycee sees through them. “The poli-trick-ians,” as he calls them, “are a joke. They offer gimmicks for us, but we get nothing.”
Beneath the gnarled limbs of an acacia tree offering shade from the broiling Caribbean sun, Jaycee holds court among a group of youths. They sit lazily on a low, graffiti-daubed wall, at the end of a dusty street lined by rusty corrugated-iron fences. Beyond the fences lie cramped, rudimentary shacks. The scent of marijuana infuses the air. Yet the sleepy atmosphere belies the war that is fought when night descends. Youths kill, and are killed, for the right to call this ramshackle street their own.
This is Jaycee’s fiefdom. (His name has been changed to protect his identity.) At just 20, wearing baggy jeans, his hair in corn-rows and his face scarred from a reform-school knife brawl, you wouldn’t know he is a “don,” or community leader, who commands maximum respect in his neighbourhood. Aside from providing for the 100 or so local families in hard times, and dispensing justice as the only law in the area, Jaycee says he controls 20 gunmen—known as “shottas”—who will both live and die for him. In a quiet moment in our conversation, he tells me: “I sit and pray every night I won’t die on the battlefield.”
In May last year Jamaica erupted in civil unrest and 76 people were killed as government forces stormed inner-city Kingston to capture the “don of dons”, Christopher “Dudus” Coke. He now awaits trial in the US, accused of gun-running and trafficking drugs through—it is alleged by law enforcement—a gang called the Shower Posse, so-called because they rain bullets down on their rivals. Dudus denies all charges.
During the struggle to capture Dudus, the world’s media disseminated images of gunmen battling police and soldiers from behind explosive-rigged barricades. On face value, it looked like a product of the vicious drugs war being waged across the Caribbean, spiralling out from Mexico and Colombia. Jamaica has long had one of the highest murder rates in the world (1,430 people were killed in 2010). Now its police force is gaining notoriety as one of the most deadly, with one in five killings allegedly carried out by the security forces, according to the NGO Jamaicans for Justice.
Yet the root cause of the unceasing cycle of violence in Kingston is not drugs but sectarianism stoked by politicians—from the ruling Jamaica Labor Party (JLP) and the opposition People’s National Party (PNP). In the 1970s, both parties armed inner-city communities loyal to them against other neighborhoods known as “garrisons.” The dons and the politicians have a symbiotic relationship: the dons get the vote out, and in turn receive patronage from some politicians on everything from building contracts, money to fix roads or simply providing amenities. Until recently, the “mother of all garrisons” was the neighbourhood of Tivoli Gardens, run by Dudus. The MP for Tivoli Gardens is Jamaica’s prime minister, Bruce Golding. He initially resisted Dudus’s extradition, but after the US stepped up pressure he ordered the security forces into Tivoli.
“I suppose the only place you could equate it to, with the violence, would be Northern Ireland,” says assistant police commissioner Justin Felice, head of the Jamaican police’s anti-corruption bureau. He was appointed after a spell in the police ombudsman’s office in Northern Ireland, where he helped to reform the police into a force that reflected both Catholic and Protestant communities. Jamaica’s similarities to Northern Ireland are startling—right down to the parties’ colours. “I arrived here on election day in 2007 and all these orange and green flags are flying,” recalls Felice. “I thought: have they got those up for me? And then I heard gunshots ringing out.”
Even the police think carefully before entering a rival area, and within the garrisons there is no democracy. To vote against the MP supported by the don of the area can mean not only expulsion from your home but, in some cases, a death sentence.
What can be done? Felice advocates an independent anti-corruption tsar. But given the power that dons wield in their communities, he also advocates talking with them in an attempt to forge a peace. Without such measures, the situation can only get worse: the removal of Dudus, who kept some semblance of order in a state where the government has failed to, has left a vacuum—and the potential for more violence as smaller dons battle for control.
Jaycee’s neighbourhood is one of the frontlines. His brother was a local don who was shot dead by a gunman several streets over, under the direction of someone in New York. In this case, the killers didn’t stop with Jaycee’s brother. A few days later they murdered a witness, a close relative who had seen the killing. Jaycee says he had no choice but to pick up his brother’s guns and protect the community. Knowing the power and loyalty that Jaycee now wields, politicians come to him offering favours in return for his help. But Jaycee sees through them. “The poli-trick-ians,” as he calls them, “are a joke. They offer gimmicks for us, but we get nothing.”
