Gangs

by Ross Kemp

  Jamaica’s corner gangs are the least organized and loosest of any I had seen and therefore very hard to pin down. A man might pick up a gun one day and put it down the next. He might be working in a legal job and as a gangster part time. Sometimes, he might hire himself out to the opposition or switch allegiance to a rival gang. This chaos makes the island’s gangsters more, and not less, lethal. And harder for the police to control.

  The Grants Pen garrison I went to visit next day has a very good example of the new type of gang that has taken over from the old-style political model. Unique in being a gang-run ghetto bang in the middle of a much more upmarket district, Grants Pen is currently divided between four warring factions, the largest and most dangerous being the High End and Low End crews. They are all affiliated to the PNP, but that doesn’t stop them fighting. To help me get an insight into the situation Marta Shaw, our assistant producer, had fixed for me to talk to Fast Mover, the don or leader of High End. We were meeting him on neutral ground of his choosing. We couldn’t go into Grants Pen because it was too dangerous. The police regularly visit the garrison in force, and only three days previously they had shot dead a member of Fast Mover’s crew while he was listening to his iPod.

  A local man named Donovan was one of our conduits to the gang.

  ‘Is the current crop of gangsters worse than the ones you knew as a child?’ I asked him.

  ‘Absolutely. It’s barbaric now.’

  ‘Can anything be done to stop the violence?’

  He looked doubtful. ‘It’s embedded in this “bad man” culture. Who’s the baddest man? Who’s the cruellest man? Who’s the vilest?’ He mimicked the singsong gang style of speech: ‘“My shoot a man with three shots.” “My shoot a man with one shot.” Who gets the highest ranking? It’s simplified right down to that – a rating. Irrespective that this is a human life we’re talking about.’

  We waited in a downtown location for our contact to arrive. A vehicle appeared and stopped in front of our hired jeep. The man inside gave us the look that said what it needed to say and we began following him to our unknown destination. As with other garrisons, Grants Pen stops drive-by shootings by blocking access roads with tyres, bedsteads, old cookers, bits of angle iron and any other scrap that serves the purpose. ‘Bleachers’ or gang lookouts watch on corners and from rooftops for signs of enemy gangs, or to give warning of a police raid. The gangs also set up ‘telltales’ – traps that give away strangers. Approaching a roundabout our driver slowed, checked left and right and then started going round it the wrong way. Just like the car in front. ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘What are you doing? Are you trying to get us killed?’

  He laughed. ‘It’s the other way around, my friend. If we circle the right way, the gang will start shooting. Everyone here knows that.’

  Except me. We pulled up suddenly. I had no idea where we were, but what I did know was that the gangsters lined up in front of me were heavily armed. We met in a kind of cross passage in the middle of some derelict buildings. There was rubble everywhere, the homes had lost their roofs and weeds were taking hold of what remained. Fast Mover’s personal bodyguard had on grey jeans, a maroon sweat top with orange sleeves, a fake Burberry beanie pulled down low over his forehead and a light blue and white bandanna pulled up over his nose. He wore a wide gold-coloured belt with a big diamanteé buckle in the shape of a skull and crossbones. Gangster chic. But the most prominent feature of his outfit for me was the big Ruger P80 9-millimetre pistol I could see sticking out of his pocket.

  Fast Mover was short and wiry. In blue jeans and a white T-shirt he too wore a beanie and a bandanna covering the lower half of his face. Like his bodyguard, he had a heavy gold chain around his neck. They let me examine the Ruger. It was in good working condition and fully loaded. When I asked to see the rest of their arsenal, they produced a Glock semi-automatic pistol with twin front ejection ports to speed up its rate of fire. Skull and Crossbones stepped back around the corner of the building and then produced a tiny black and silver pistol from an unseen mate. Easy to conceal in a boot top. ‘If the police came here now there’d be a lot of shooting,’ Fast Mover said with a laugh.

  Without warning, the previously unseen gang member stepped into view holding an AK-47 assault rifle. I said, ‘That would get rid of any intruders.’ The new man wore gaudy patterned shorts with a white cotton shirt pulled up over his head, leaving a narrow slit for the eyes. He had some trouble releasing the AK-47’s magazine. Fast Mover took the weapon, detached the mag and handed it to me. Like the other firearms, it was fully loaded.

  I said, ‘Where do these weapons come from – Haiti?’

  Now brandishing a Browning 9-millimetre pistol, Fast Mover sang out, ‘It’s a Haiti P80,’ as if he were reciting a nursery rhyme.

  Guns are pouring into the country from every direction in a drugs for weapons exchange between Jamaica’s gangs, Colombian narcotics traffickers and Haitian gunrunners. A boat laden with compressed locally grown ganja and/or hash oil puts to sea and meets a vessel from Haiti – or sometimes Honduras – with a cargo of guns: AK-47s, M16s and Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifles, Glocks, Browning M9s and Ruger P80 pistols. The guns come into Jamaica, the dope goes to Haiti or Honduras and on to the USA and everybody’s happy – or at least they are if they are in the loop. The cocaine travels by all kinds of routes, not least the ‘go-fast’ speedboats that roar between Jamaica and its neighbours nightly.

  We moved into one of the ruined rooms and sat down on some white plastic garden chairs. Softly spoken and highly articulate, Fast Mover told me that as the don of High End he tried to help the poor people in the area by giving them money. ‘I give their parents lunch money for some of their children. Things like that.’ A regular Robin Hood, just like the old-style political dons. He said that things were better now in the community in that more money filtered down from the government, but, ‘Still you have people living in great poverty.’ When I asked how he had become the don he said, ‘It just came natural. By defending people, I got their applause. I share a lot of thoughts with them, and positiveness. The people have to choose you. I didn’t choose this life. This life chose me.’

  ‘What would you say to any young person who was thinking of joining a gang?’

  ‘I would say sometimes it’s not what they choose. Sometimes it chooses them, because of the environment where they are living.’

  ‘What about some of the young men in the world who think joining a gang is glamorous?’

  ‘I don’t know about people who think it’s a great life. I’m really fighting for a cause. I can’t go and do a nine-to-five job. I’ll live this life until I die. It’s not like I can leave it.’

  ‘What about your children? What if they wanted to take up this kind of life?’

  He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t want them to take up this kind of life. I would like the best for them. Have a nice job and take care of their father!’ He told me he used to drive a taxi before joining the gang. Aged twenty-four, he was philosophical about his chances of making it to his next birthday: ‘I get rich or die trying. I got no worries about dying. Death is part of what I do – either me causing it, or me dying.’ He ticked off his objectives in life on his fingers: ‘Gold, women, respect.’ A gang leader for no more than a couple of years, Fast Mover claimed to own five or six houses, three or four cars and have ‘some very nice girls’ at his beck and call.

  ‘Why do you think some women find gangsters attractive?’

  ‘Maybe they just like the glamour and the fame. But there’s a price to pay. They think it’s like a movie star kind of thing. But this is not a movie. People get killed.’

  ‘Some people told me there was a direct connection between you, the area don, and the MP of the PNP. Does that still happen?’

  ‘That’s the old style. I don’t need the MP.’

  ‘Does he have contacts with other gangs in the community?’

  ‘He does have contacts with other gangs. Before, the politici
ans used to give the gangs guns. But it’s not like that any more. Gangs get their own guns. The politicians still play a part, but it’s not a major part like it was.’

  ‘Does the fact that this is an election year mean that you will have extra problems?’ Fast Mover nodded. ‘Yes. Because I will have to pick a side.’

  ‘So if you pick JLP or PNP, there will be a problem from the other side. How will that show itself ?’

  ‘Guys will come in hard with guns. And the police – whatever side they choose, they will come. I seen some dark stuff. A man in my position, the next thing the police will shoot him. But I want to say this: if you have a gun, there is a consequence to pay. So if you are not prepared, I don’t think you should ever touch it.’

  ‘Why do you think parts of Jamaica are so violent?’

  ‘Sometimes I think that the people who make the movies – that has a lot to do with people taking up this kind of life. Because everybody wants to be a movie star.’ He laughed. ‘Tourists go to the north coast or the hills; they don’t see the hard man community.’

  ‘What could be done to change things for the better?’

  ‘Well, I’d like to see the government come in and put in some ways and means so the kids can have a better schooling. Right now the children have to pay when they go to high school. For education I don’t think you should pay so much.’

  ‘What do you think the future holds for you?’

  ‘The future depends on if I live or die. If I live, I see a bright future. I can take my time and get to the top. Not if I go to prison. From my point of view, the majority of people in Jamaica are gangsters. I think the police are gangsters. I think the prime minister is a gangster. But they are high-level gangsters.’

  Either free to cross gang boundaries at will or insanely rash, Fast Mover later arrived at my hotel behind the wheel of a top-end saloon car, or ‘low rider’ as they are known in Jamaica. Favoured marques are Mercedes, BMW and the Lexus saloon Fast Mover was driving. Over a cold beer, Fast Mover said that as well as defending their local turf he and his two dozen crew made money by extortion, drug dealing and contract killings. Shopkeepers routinely pay the gangs $500 a month or more protection money.

  Many assassinations are requested by business people seeking to eliminate the competition. A car dealer, for example, might come to Fast Mover and say, ‘I’ve got a problem with Mr X – his garage is taking a lot of my business. How much to take care of the problem?’ The answer, Fast Mover told me, varied according to the difficulty of the job. But for a man’s life it was ludicrously low – hundreds not thousands of Jamaican dollars. He was frank about his methods of killing: ‘You have to find a man’s weakness. Everyone got a weakness – drugs, women, drink. We got girls in the gang we can use, or we pay a girl. She lure a man to his death just like that.’ He snapped a couple of lean fingers.

  However such killings are done, they are disastrous for the island’s legitimate businesses. Every year they pay roughly 7 per cent of their profits to the gangs in protection and 75 per cent of Jamaica’s college graduates leave to seek work abroad. Every year more and more businesses move with them, helping the cycle of poverty and joblessness that fuels the gangs. And the violence.

  In the three days we were filming in Grants Pen two people died – the police shot dead a High End member and a High End gunman murdered a Low End rival – and a family was burned out of its home. Fast Mover told me he hated the Low End crew ‘because they have spilled blood. Our blood. And we will take them out.’

  This was exactly the same kind of tit-for-tat killing I’d seen elsewhere in the world: small gangs, living and operating in areas separated by a street or a wall, locked in a spiral of mutual killing. And, as elsewhere, the irony was that the rival gangsters lived in the same kind of homes, had the same interests, wore similar clothes, listened to the same music, ate the same food and drove the same kind of cars.

  In Jamaica, more often than not, their fathers and grandfathers had been involved in the island’s earlier political killing, and it was a matter of family honour to keep fighting. I asked Fast Mover, ‘Is there any end to this?’

  He shook his head. ‘No.’

  I left Fast Mover with his bodyguard – the pair of them looking over their shoulders for the rest of their lives.

  The following Monday I went to see Caroline Gomes, who has been running the civil rights and pressure group Jamaicans for Justice since the 1999 Kingston riots, when there was widespread shooting, looting and burning, a countrywide police and army lockdown and many people died. Gomes said the aims of the group were to help the public get justice from the police and the government, and to document cases of official abuse as a way of advocating change. ‘People die here very anonymously,’ she said, ‘and are labelled criminals because they die at the hands of the police. People want society to know that their sons or daughters were not criminals… We are trying to get the government to do something about police killings.’

  ‘How many of those killings get to court?’

  ‘Very few. We find that when we do actually get a verdict of criminal responsibility on the part of the police we run into a blockade at the state level. In the last ten years we have had one policeman convicted.’

  ‘How many killings by the police last year?’

  ‘Two hundred and twenty-six. The last ten years we’ve had close to 1,600 deaths at the hands of the police. As the police concentrate on the area of Kingston, the criminals grab a car and travel. We’ve had some awful cases outside Kingston – situations where the police have drawn their guns and fired because a crowd are angry. The police are supposed to carry a gun in self-defence and use proportionate force. But…’

  ‘Some people have told us the police act as judge, jury and executioner.’

  ‘If it’s what the police call a “righteous shooting” – people shooting at them, bad gang action – then people don’t come to us. But we get about 30 per cent of cases where people feel deeply that an execution occurred or there was a serious breach of police procedure. I don’t know how much of the horror stories you want, but there was a killing where seven young men died. They were locked up in a concrete building with metal windows. The police story is that they came to execute a warrant, they were fired on and returned fire. Seven people were found dead; not one policeman received a scratch. The story from the residents was that they took a “Judas coat” [an informer or traitor] with them. He got the men inside to open the door and the police went in and executed them. Amnesty International investigated it extensively. Expert testimony said they were killed point blank. Six of the seven had multiple gunshot wounds in their head. The youngest was fifteen.

  ‘Jamaica has a two-sided image. It’s the sun, sea, sand beautiful tourist destination: Bob Marley, “One Love”, Rastafari. And then the other half is a horribly violent place where “The police have to do what they have to do.” So we have had a hard time drawing it not only to international but to local attention. The tactic of killing people to solve a case actually breeds murder, and it is ineffective. It’s something we’ve been doing now in Jamaica for forty years. It hasn’t controlled our murder rate: we have a rising murder rate. The British government has put a lot of money into police reform. While I accept that is important, my problem has been the lack of accountability.’

  I asked Gomes about links between the island’s politicians and the gangs.

  ‘It started with the politicians and now they have lost control. But the links remain. Those gangs have nominal ties, and sometimes beyond nominal ties, to the political parties. So you have well-known dons who are big social figures who no longer live in the community. And they’ll have birthday parties where politicians turn up. They’ll have funerals at which ministers of government turn up. The very strong political ties allow [the politicians] to get out the vote at election time. We feel strongly that’s why we can’t get a handle on it – because the links are too deep and too long-standing. I’m not sure we have much j
ustice.

  ‘The police can only operate as they operate because the leadership above them allows it. If we change the leadership and ask them to be accountable, then the police will change. It can occur. We’ve seen communities like August Town and Fletcher’s Land taking charge of themselves. We’ve got to build and keep pointing out the hypocrisy… Only mad people keep doing what they’ve been doing over and over again and expecting different results. We’ve got to try a different way. You’ve got to be an eternal optimist to do this work: believe it can happen and it will happen and it must happen. The choices are not nice otherwise.’

  You have to hope there are more people out there like Caroline Gomes.

  We went into Craig Town at noon, when it was boiling hot. Our guide, Wani, was a short, slim-built twenty-one-year-old with cornrows woven tight to his head. He wore a white singlet and kept a cigarette tucked permanently behind his ear. He and the rest of his dozen or so crew occupied a 200-metre-square Craig Town block bordering Benbow, the neighbouring and enemy downtown garrison. Even in the blazing sunlight it felt really, really dangerous. Not because anyone was sticking a gun in my face, but because the Craig Town gang were convinced the Benbow crew next door would be jealous of our presence. Craig Town, Trench Town, Arnett Gardens and Jones Town were all once part of the same PNP community, but when the police killed the overall don in 2004 the area descended into a lethal power struggle that is still being fought. As far as Wani and his mates were concerned, they were not actually a criminal gang: they only did what was necessary to defend their turf from other crews.

  Wani took me on a tour of their turf. We walked down a narrow street intersecting with more of the same at right angles. The single-storey one-bedroom houses were painted in once bright but now faded colours, and all of their roofs were corrugated iron. Once decent family homes, they had long since deteriorated to shanties, not improved by the bullet strikes that had chewed lumps out of the walls, or in the case of high-velocity rounds, drilled right through them. Many were now home to more than one family, crammed together into a couple of rooms in the sweltering heat. We came on a stretch of houses that had been gutted, only the broken walls standing as if they had been bombed. ‘The people ran away,’ Wani told me.