THE police yesterday were out in strong force in two volatile communities, attempting to dampen the activities of marauding criminals. Last night, a curfew was imposed on Spanish Town, St Catherine, at 6:00 pm, the boundaries of which extended north along Old Harbour Road, east along the canal banks, south along the Spanish Town bypass and east along Oxford Road, as the police fought to contain gunfights between rival gangs One Order and Klansman.The curfew was to end at 9:00 am today.

Over in August Town, St Andrew, the lawmen were able to report a fair amount of calm, two days after bands of thugs stopped vehicles at gunpoint and searched the occupants and the vehicles.

Residents in the area say the gunmen stole valuables and threatened to take their lives.

“The man them deh pan almost every corner and search every vehicle that pass, even bicycle. Them thief anything them want and all a threaten to kill people,” one resident said. The police have been maintaining a constant presence in the area in order to restore normality to the community.

“There is a heavy police presence in the area,” Constable Oliver Livingston of the Constabulary Communications Network told the Observer last night. The curfew in Spanish Town followed the reconnaissance yesterday by a high-ranking police team who met in Spanish Town to fine-tune plans to break the cycle of violence plaguing the town.

The team of cops included acting Assistant Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington, head of the Special Anti Crime Task Force Senior Superintendent Donald Pusey, Assistant Commissioner Arthur “Stitch” Martin, Senior Superintendent Lola Evans and Inspector Dennis Gardner, who is based in Spanish Town.

“We have to maintain law and order at all costs,” Pusey said. “Some of the undesirables who loiter in the park may have to take up residence elsewhere.” As the team discussed strategies on the grounds of the bus park, school children and adults piled into buses and taxis. Although the area was quiet and calm, many people were obviously nervous.

“Nobody nuh want stray shot lick them so we haffi a look out,” one Jamaica Urban Transit Corporation employee said. “It was hell yesterday, (Sunday).”

After the lawmen wrapped up their discussions, Pusey and the senior officers drove through the communities under the control of both gangs whose members traded shots on Sunday.

Police say control of an extortion racket, centred in the bus park, was behind the gunfire which sent members of the public scurrying for cover. An elderly man from Ellerslie Pen was shot in the arm during the incident, cops said.

“The gunshot a fire since Saturday night,” one commuter said. Since the 1989 general elections, the People’s National Party-aligned Klansman gang assumed control of the bus park and has been running a massive extortion racket in certain sections of the town, police said.

When the Jamaica Labour Party won the local government elections in 2003, the One Order gang, which aligns itself to the Opposition party, sought to wrest control of the bus park from the Klansman gang. Klansman members have stoutly resisted those efforts. Since then, a bloody feud has raged between both gangs resulting in the loss of hundreds of lives.

On Sunday night, 57 year-old businessman Lanford Bernard was shot dead at his home in Lauriston, Spanish Town. Police say Bernard drove home in his Toyota Lexus motorcar and attempted to open a grille when he was attacked by three gunmen.

They stole his gold chain and money. Before leaving, the gunmen turned their weapons on Bernard and killed him on the spot, cops said.

Bernard’s murder is not being linked to the gang feud, Spanish Town police said.