Mark Wignall | We rock and roll with murder

In 1993, a gardener killed the lady who employed him, Jennifer Cox, a senior executive at a large insurance firm in Jamaica. He also hacked to death two ancillary workers employed to the household. About 20 years before that there was also another infamous murder of an uptown family by, yes, another gardener who had buried the bodies before the horrific crime had been determined.

At the 1993 sentencing, the judge declared that “violence has taken over this country.” Really? Violence was given its official stamp of authority in the 1970s when the governmental apparatus stood in spectacular support of that nastiness.

In the 1960s, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) government packed JLP supporters into one particular governmental housing project known as Rema. That was the norm of the nasty and openly rotten politics of the time. But even more sad, it was what we expected. It was mostly what we knew.

As the People’s National Party (PNP) took power in 1972 and Michael Manley began to work his political magic on the minds of many in Jamaica,, his firebrand Minister of Housing, Anthony Spaulding took matters into his own hands.

Workers at the housing ministry were used to evict the JLP supporters who were tenants of the small high-rise community. Seemingly supervised by the minister, many of the tenants had their furniture and appliances thrown from third-floor windows and smashed to bits on the hard concrete below.

So, at that time, just in case there were still many people who were in doubt about where Government stood - either in support of violence or vehemently against it - the reality was aptly demonstrated. A party in power had as its first duty the doling out of just enough violence to its loyalists that could be reined in at specific times.

In 2016, Dr Anthony Harriott, criminologist, said that “crime prevention is a long-term goal whereas crime reduction is an immediate need”. Most of us can ride along with that.

A journalist friend took me to task a few days ago when he suggested that I had given the commissioner of police a free pass on his national responsibility on crafting a workable crime plan.

“I had to believe that he could carry the show to its end,” I said. “In fact, he made me believe that he could do it. In the past, he has flopped me. Now I am seeing something in him to make me a believer. I may be wrong, but that’s where I am now.”

SOME COPS INTO HIT JOBS

It was a very infamous murder at the time, but there were many in the hierarchy of the party who celebrated it. One well-known smooth operator of a criminal mastermind told me that he had organised the murder. Three men were killed that day, and the three men who they faced were policemen. Posing as ‘gunmen.’ It was about a month later that I learned that the hit had been ordered from abroad.

“So, if I approach you as a link to get a hit done on a man, what must I do?” I said to an underground acquaintance of mine.

He laughed. “First, mi know yu not into nutten wid nobody.” I laughed back in his face.

“If I open up to you and let you know I am serious, how much would I have to pay?”

He stared me up and down. “If is a woman, it gwine more expensive. Too much problem in dat. If is a man close to yu, again, dat expensive – bout $250,000. Me know yu not rich, but a dat yu haffi fine.”

“Suppose I know you and we are fren and bredrin.”

“… fren and bredrin, dat free. Just a drinks money.”

The well-connected political operative who told me he had allegedly organised the hit on the three men did not display any signs of doubt as we spoke and drank Remy Martin. Years later when I met another of his associates, that man offered to ‘remedy’ a situation that had created for me some amount of ‘inconvenience.’

After he told me what had been done, his justification was “Yu is an important man. Yu must just leave dat to people wid beast inside a dem. It don’t mek sense yu ask question bout what me do and don’t do. People like you different to people like me.”

COVID-19, I would imagine, has depressed the price of murder for hire, but like in all other matters, there will be special orders.

“Missa Wignall, mi can’t tell yu say mi know every hit man bout di place, but in my area, any ting a go dung, mi know bout it. If you have $40,000 now, wi can throw dung a man fi yu.”

AJ NICHOLSON VS KAMINA JOHNSON SMITH

It is a creepy, crawly show, and I am not quite sure why I am even commenting on it. An exchange of emails between a veteran PNP politician, AJ Nicholson, obviously longing for a taste of a fame that eluded him, and the current foreign affairs minister, Kamina Johnson Smith. It, therefore, begs the question, why would the very male AJ find a need to be sending the very female Kamina an email at close to five in the morning?

I believe I have the answer. At five in the morning most people my age are up, and the people on our minds are those we love. I definitely know that Kamina Johnson Smith is not on the mind of AJ at five in the morning. It has to be governmental policy. Intensely so. But the emails do not show that.

- Mark Wignall is a political and public-affairs analyst. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com.