EDITORIAL - Barbarism in Lauriston and dismantling gangs

This week's murder and decapitation of three persons, including a mother and daughter in Lauriston, St Catherine, is not only grotesquely barbaric, but represents a new low in the gang-related terrorism, to which Jamaicans have grown too accustomed and frightened.

It is not surprising that, as we report elsewhere in this newspaper, people are streaming out of Lauriston, seeking refuge in perceived safer communities. In the process, they are creating Jamaica's latest group of internally displaced persons, a categorisation which the Jamaican autho-rities find uncomfortable being applied to the people, who too frequently have to flee violence, political or gang-related, in their communities.

The specific trigger of this eruption in Lauriston, and why victims were targeted is not yet clear. But the information, so far, suggests that the killings are related to either inter- or intra-gang violence that has plagued St Catherine, and especially its capital, Spanish Town and its suburbs, for several years. When the parish's two main gangs, One Order and Klansman, are not fighting each other over turf and to control extortion, they are sometimes in internal strife over leadership and the spoils of crime.

The developments in Lauriston, and the continued existence of these two groups, which are among the country's most notorious criminal gangs, raise questions about the efficacy of the police's anti-gang strategy and demand an accounting from the police chief, Mr Owen Ellington.

We, of course, acknowledge that while Jamaica still has one of the world's highest murder rates, the number of homicides has declined, so far this year by over 40 per cent. This continues the trend that followed last year's action by the security forces in Tivoli Gardens to smash criminal insurgents bent on preventing the arrest and ultimate extradition of the alleged drug lord Christopher Coke.

The dismantling of Coke's redoubt and the weakening, if not collapse of the criminal franchise, the Shower Posse he is alleged to have run, was facilitated by the state of emergency that the administration, having prevaricated over Coke's extradition, was forced to employ to resist his praetorians.

In the aftermath of Tivoli, the police declared their intention to pursue a robust anti-gang strategy. Quite surprisingly, they did not feel it essential for the state of emergency, which was limited to Kingston and St Andrew, to be in place in other parishes - this newspaper felt otherwise - for them to go robustly after the gangs in other communities.

Disrupting their activities

That project is incomplete, as Mr Ellington reminded his territorial commanders at the start of this year - that each of them will be "identifying, profiling and launching counter-action against the three most-active gangs in their domain, with the aim of significantly disrupting their activities, if not completely demolishing them".

The police chief set a date of March 31 for his commanders to achieve these targets. Unfortunately, there has been no systematic reporting by Mr Ellington and/or his senior officers on quantifiable performance against targets and timelines.

We are sure the police will point us to homicide data, and the crime statistics in general, which are clearly headed in the right direction, and which most Jamaicans would wish to accelerate. But the barbarism of Lauriston, and the continued existence of Klansman and One Order gangs remind us that there is still much more to be done.

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