EDITORIAL - Uneasy with Supt Hamilton's initiative

A week ago today, dozens of men, several of them suspected or confessed gangsters who have been on police wanted lists, were at the Kingston Central Police Station.

They were not arrested. They were there at free will, talking with each other and with the police.

These were peace talks, facilitated by Superintendent of Police Victor Hamilton, who is in charge of the Central Kingston police district.

In this small division, where there are nearly as many gangs as city blocks, nearly 50 people were murdered last year. Five have been killed already in 2014.

So, Superintendent Hamilton was encouraging gang members to talk through differences, how they perceive police-community relations and, ultimately, to silence their guns and to give a chance to the Government's proposals for the community's development.

That, on the face of it, is a positive development. But this newspaper, in the absence of more, must - as we did six years ago when Horace Levy and his Peace Management Initiative brokered a supposed peace treaty between gangs in August Town - declare our unease with Mr Hamilton's initiative.

Six years ago, as Mr Levy told Jamaica, August Town gangs, while agreeing to a ceasefire, insisted on maintaining their weapons. "It's a matter of their own protection, their self-defence," Horace Levy said at the time. "They believe that the police are inefficient and ineffective."

In other words, it was appropriate for the Jamaican State to devolve some of its authority and responsibility for internal security to community warlords on the promise that they would not engage in gun salutes and walk around with their rifles and handguns in open view. There is little that this newspaper can report for those concessions in August Town, where criminal violence remains a matter of concern and where a policeman was shot dead recently and a woman constable injured.

During the August Town euphoria of 2008, we warned that before too long it might be "Central Kingston, May Pen and Flankers" where criminals might squeeze concession from the Jamaican State for not openly slinging their guns and for only "shooting the occasional victim rather than engaging in large-scale carnage".

This time is different?

Perhaps this time it's different, and maybe we are ahead of ourselves. In that event, there are some questions to be answered and issues to be clarified. Among these is whether Superintendent Hamilton acted on the authority of the constabulary's head, Owen Ellington, and the Police High Command.

If Mr Hamilton acted on such authority, there is the matter of whether such discussions between the police and suspected gangsters are a policy of the Government and what criteria have been laid out by Peter Bunting, the national security minister, for this kind of engagement. For what transpired at Kingston Central appears to stray into the precincts of policy, rather than mere operations.

Perchance our observation is right, it would appear that Mr Bunting, or maybe it is Mr Ellington, is committed to some form of unannounced amnesty to criminals. That, maybe, is part of a broader strategy that remains opaque, but may yet become clear.

But what must the criminals give in return for their amnesty? Will Mr Hamilton demand their guns, or do they just stay wrapped and oiled, to be brought out at the warlords' convenience?

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