United States notes Jamaica's concerns on illegal guns

Stemming the flow of guns from the United States to Jamaica remains a major priority for the two governments which accept that for years the Americans have not done enough.

The US Embassy in Kingston in 2008 admitted that Washington needed to do more and promised Jamaican authorities that additional measures would be implemented.

But three years after that promise, local security officials continue to report that the majority of the guns in the hands of Jamaican criminals are from the US.

"While there is the Jamaica-Haiti guns-for-drugs trade, it is still America that is the source of the majority of illegal guns here," a senior police officer told The Gleaner yesterday.

"We have been talking to the Americans forever, but not much has been done," said the police officer, who requested that his name be withheld.

The cop was echoing the words of Prime Minister Bruce Golding who last year reiterated concerns about the flow of guns into the island from the US.

Golding told Parliament that his Government intended to renew efforts to "strengthen bilateral cooperation with the US with a view to addressing the flow of illegal guns from the US to Jamaica with the same vigour that we seek to apply to the flow of illegal drugs from Jamaica to the US".

More than three years ago, in a diplomatic cable dated February 2008, embassy officials said they met with then Minister of National Security Derrick Smith and then permanent secretary in the ministry, Gilbert Scott, who provided them with good reasons to revisit the measures to stem the flow of guns.

"Firearms smuggled into Jamaica from the US has been a perennial complaint by the Government of Jamaica," said the cable accessed by The Gleaner through the whistle-blowing entity WikiLeaks.

"Reducing the supply of illegal firearms in Jamaica is seen by the Government of Jamaica as critical if the Government is to reduce violent crime on the island," added the cable.

Stemming drug flow from Ja

The embassy admitted that over the years, its focus was on stemming the flow of illegal drugs from Jamaica to the US but promised that with the full staffing of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Kingston, more would be done to tackle the problem of illegal guns.

"The PS (Scott) remarked that (the options implemented so far by the US) seemed to only attack the firearms problem from the demand said. He wondered about the supply side - meaning measures the US could adopt to stop the flow of illegal firearms from the US," said the cable.

But embassy officials pointed to American law, which allows the legitimate purchase of firearms, and pointed to the problem that once these guns are purchased, they can be smuggled into Jamaica by container shipments.

"The work planned by ICE will have an important impact on the Jamaican Government's perception of how cooperative the US Government can be on this issue," said the cable.

According to the cable: "The ICE attaché informed Scott that his office would be quite useful in disrupting firearms trafficking. The attaché advised that once his office in Kingston was fully staffed, ICE would be working with Jamaican authorities on undercover operations and controlled deliveries."

The ICE attaché was reportedly responding to Scott, who had questioned why the US could not do more to scan outgoing shipments to Jamaica.

ICE is the American agency with primary responsibility for goods being smuggled into and out of the US.