EDITORIAL - Losing the plot on Tivoli

Peter Bunting, the national security minister, acted wisely in the face of the latest round of violence in the Tivoli Gardens/Denham Town area of West Kingston. He kept quiet.

The police chief, Owen Ellington, and the commander of the Kingston West Police Division, Steve McGregor, should have been advised to follow suit. Instead, they trotted out clichés about catching the criminals and then, after failure, going back to the drawing board to try to catch the criminals again.

Everyone heard. We doubt that anyone listened.

And that's the problem faced by Mr Ellington and Mr Bunting. They lost the plot on Tivoli Gardens, interpreted here to include the adjoining communities.

For decades, Tivoli Gardens, loyal to the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), was perceived as a sort of command centre and primary base for the JLP's engagement in the partial blight on Jamaica's democracy, and the use of violence as an instrument of politics. West Kingston was the archetypal garrison constituency.

Transfer of power

But like many other garrisons on either side of the political divide, something else happened - the street generals became powerful in their own right. Their 'legitimacy' transcended politics and they sustained their power/influence through the creation of profitable crime syndicates and a willingness to employ crude and brute force.

Christopher Coke, of Tivoli Gardens, had emerged the most influential of those criminal caudillos before he was dislodged in 2010, at the insistence of the United States, for extradition to be tried for gunrunning and drug trafficking. The process required a state of emergency and the defeat by the security forces of Coke's militia.

At Coke's takedown, Mr Bunting was in Opposition. He and his now-governing People's National Party (PNP) opposed the extension of the state of emergency then enforced in the capital.

Nonetheless, in the aftermath of the Tivoli Gardens operation, crime, particularly murders, declined by a third over three years, which Mr Bunting attributed primarily to the absence of Coke and the degrading of the gang, thus the loss of their ability to maintain their criminal franchise across Jamaica. Mr Bunting has contorted much since, but his remarks were widely interpreted to mean Coke was the principal figure behind crime in Jamaica.

Drop in crime

Few would doubt there was some correlation between events in Tivoli Gardens nearly four years ago and the decline in murders that followed. But what correlation remains unclear.

What is patently obvious is that the drop in crime has not held.

Gangs are back in West Kingston, apparently battling each other for turf and the right to control extortion rackets in the downtown area. Several persons have been shot and killed, or injured, over the last two years. Two, including a 12-year-old child, died last weekend. Ten were injured.

We have two observations.

First, Tivoli Gardens/Denham Town is a relatively small area which we believe the security forces should have the ability to contain, especially after Coke's extradition and the loud promises of the police, photo ops and all, that the gangs would not be allowed to return. The police owe Jamaica an explanation for this strategic and tactical failure.

Second, there are lessons to be learnt about what caused the drop in violence after the police-military operation. That should be added to the terms of reference of the commission of enquiry into the conduct of the security forces in West Kingston when they went after Coke.

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