HEAD of the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin said investigators were building cases against major drug kingpins, but noted that “it takes time to get something that will stick”.

Making a case against major drug lords operating here takes time, as was clearly the case when the United States imprisoned Mafia kingpins years ago but only after extensive investigations and trials, Lewin pointed out.

He was responding to a question about the apparent lack of arrests of big-time local drug dealers, at a recent meeting of the Rotary Club of St Andrew North at the Hilton Kingston Hotel. He told the Rotarians that the region’s drug trade “poses a serious threat to Jamaica and democracy if it goes unchecked”.

Over the past few years, Jamaica has suffered more than 1,000 murders annually and police say many of these killings are drug related and largely confined to inner-city areas which are divided along political lines or ruled by “dons” who oversee illicit activities.

Lewin noted that although some “linkages” existed between major drug lords and violence in inner-city areas, the drug trade and so-called garrisons were largely “separate issues” with a unique set of problems.

Nevertheless, he warned, the drug trade, had the potential to overwhelm the island. Nearly 100 metric tons of drugs are now shipped annually through Jamaica, and sophisticated drug gangs — operating like “Fortune 500 companies” — bring with them gun-related violence, corrupt government officials, and money laundering that undermined legitimate businesses, Lewin said.

Furthermore, said the JDF head, although the authorities were working closely with other nations to stop the trade, more must be done to battle sophisticated traffickers.

“Terrorists can accompany drug trafficking… and we must never think that it can’t happen here,” he cautioned.

At the same time, Lewin reported dramatic progress in recent months in fighting crime in garrison communities, following Prime Minister PJ Patterson’s launch last December of a major anti-crime fight. But he said inner-city violence and social problems couldn’t be eradicated overnight, even though security forces now patrolled the areas constantly.

On the availability of trained personnel, Lewin insisted: “You can’t just order 500 policemen with five years’ experience.”

In inner-city communities, one of the biggest challenges was winning residents’ hearts and minds, Lewin said, adding that it would be a long process, involving the rebuilding of trust with the authorities and the creation of healthy civic organisations and community-minded leaders.

“When the security forces move in, we expect them (the residents) to help us, but it doesn’t work that way.” However, he noted that since December’s ongoing crime initiative, there had been a significant drop in “hostilities” toward authorities in garrison areas, and residents were now far more willing to co-operate in reporting illegal activities.

“Not one murder” had been reported since authorities arrived, and no resident had reported a case of police abuse, he added.

Nancy Anderson, a legal officer with the Independent Jamaica Council for Human Rights, could not confirm that no cases of abuses had been reported. But neither did she know of any that had been.

Despite the progress, Lewin conceded: “We can’t leave until the communities see there is a better way of living — reducing poverty, improving health care and education, and creating an atmosphere of justice and fair play.”

“The trends are in the right direction,” he said. Authorities must move even more quickly now to improve the inner-city areas.