Gang bangarang

Orville Taylor, Contributor

Anyone in his right mind, and yours, would want to see the scourge of violent crimes brought under control. And Parliament has acted decisively in passing anti-gang Criminal Justice (Suppre-ssion of Criminal Organisations) Bill. Whatever the numbers that the police have given us, we do know that gangs are reportedly accounting for an increasing number of violent crimes, including extortion.

Furthermore, close to 70 per cent of all homicides and shootings are perpetrated by young men, and the victimology reflects a similar profile. Two years ago, a UNDP report observed that Jamaica spends more than US$529 million annually in combating youth crime, accounting for more than 3.21 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP). With the recently announced 1.4 per cent increase in GDP, crime militates against economic growth.

Nevertheless, as expected, human-rights groups are concerned, and with reason. Others who have a sense of history recall with repugnance some of the behaviour of the police under the 1974 Suppression of Crime Act (SCA). This statute allowed an entire generation of policemen and women to run roughshod over the rights of poor people, ironically, from the same socio-economic background as themselves. This led to deeply entrenched acrimony and mistrust of the police.

Democratic socialism

It was 1974, the year that Michael Manley declared democratic socialism as his Govern-ment's official doctrine, Portia Simpson was making her political novitiate, Peter Bunting was a second-former in a prestigious high school and Owen Ellington a seventh-grader, and political violence was showing its torso.

Under the repugnant legislation, young men from my Chalice City, Brooke Valley and Sherlock Youth clubs were routinely abused, unless they eluded the 'jump in, jump out' military-style jeep or the Ford Pinto, manned by sadistic cops. Armed with plaited heavy-duty electric wire, they would beat my friends as if they were the Zimbabwe cricket team. Particularly targeted were those with dreadlocks or perceived weed smokers, despite the community though poor, being virtually crime-free.

A retired police officer lamented in a 2001 letter to the editor: "The vast majority of senior officers, inclusive of the commissioner ... , became members of the ... Force during the period ... . Hence they do not know how to operate outside of the act."

While I have lots of confidence in this commissioner and his officer corps, especially as regards their focus on a new policing ethos, which reflects human rights, community engagement and respect for law and order within the constabulary, there are still some lingering elements from that era.

Indeed, the veteran noted that despite its repeal, many of its provisions remain, through "... the incorporation ... of that act into the Constabulary Force Act." Therefore, despite the multiplicity of agencies within and without the force, which scrutinise it, there is still a lot of room for police error and excesses.

Thus, while Minister Peter Bunting is right that the bill does not give the cops more powers, the High Command must give lucid guidelines to a set of people who sometimes breach the well-known Use-of-Force Policy.

Particularly bothersome is how can we concretely determine that a set of men targeted by the cops are "... any gang, group, alliance, network, combination or other arrangement among three or more persons ...?" Is it simply a judgement call, or does the status of each 200-plus group have to be determined by the courts? What is the evidentiary standard that it has, "... as one of its purposes the commission of one or more serious offences".

It is also scary that a court could use "... evidence that the person has been charged or arrested for a criminal offence on more than one occasion in the company of a person or persons known to be a part of a criminal organisation". What if he is innocent and is targeted by the few rogue cops, remaining in the force, and the routinely dropped charges are all spurious?

Doubtless the law is needed, but Parliament, like Pontius Pilate, pretends that its predecessors did not create the crisis. What is ironic about the period 1974-1994 was that despite governments' and oppositions' manifestly anti-crime and violence stances, many lower-class communities transformed in the blink of the eye. Corner youth, hanging out because their houses were too small to accommodate their daily 'reasonings', suddenly found themselves owning scores of firearms, way beyond their economic means.

In the geographical area where the
aforementioned clubs were located, the two political protagonists were a
senior Queen's Counsel and advocate of black consciousness, and
solidarity and a decorated law enforcer, who had served in both the
police and military. Both now deceased are probably explaining to my
friends who died in green and orange colours, killed by their erstwhile
'bredren'. Unless recovered by the police in operations, the guns were
never returned.

Politicians to blame

What
nobody seems to want to admit is that the seeds for the proliferation of
gangs were planted by the politicians. Then, paradoxically, as the
1990s saw the end of the SCA, and the increase in political peace and
tolerance, the templates for gang creation were still not
destroyed.

Worse, with the drying up of political
money, which the parties used to fuel the strife in what Carl Stone
called 'clientelism', the patterns, well learned from the earlier
generations of 'shottas', were passed down to a new set of youngsters
who, now without the economic sustenance of the parties, found
innovative ways to fund their lives. Success attracts followers; thus,
in the same way that Asafa Powell's MVP and Usain Bolt's Racers
stimulated a plethora of track clubs, so did the original gangs lead to
the more than 260 bands, wreaking havoc in the
country.

Hypocritically or ignorantly, politicians try
to mislead the country with fallacious statistical correlations, such
as the causal impact of increased fatherlessness, when there is no
evidence to support this.

Let me say this
unambiguously in Black History Month: Politicians created this gang
phenomenon and the Frankenstein monster is now plaguing its
creator.

Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer in
sociology at the UWI and a radio talk-show host. Email feedback to
columns@gleanerjm.com and
tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.