A lack of resources, specifically a computerised system to capture the data, has put the police in the position where, to develop a list of Jamaica’s most wanted criminals, has become a major project. The last list was published three years ago.

Each police division knows who its biggest troublemakers and crime network chiefs are, but nationally, the police are yet to refine the information to select the most dangerous and the most deadly.

Intelligence chief Superintendent Albert Edwards told the Sunday Observer that because crime and killings have become so rampant, there are masses of cases to assess in order to compile a list.

“We’re not like overseas where everything is computerised,” said Edwards.

Jurisdictions like the New York Police Department in the United States and the Metropolitan Police Service have a most wanted list on their web sites, with photos and details of the alleged criminals.

But locally, the crime units in the parishes were largely reluctant to give the information.

The National Intelligence Bureau, located downtown Kingston, has been doing the analysis on Jamaica’s most nefarious criminals, but the national review will not be finalised, said the intelligence chief, until later this month.

“The 10 most wanted,” said Edwards, “are those the police will spend most of their resources trying to capture.”

The list also alerts the public to dangerous criminals on the loose.

But what the police cannot say, at present, is who among the many are the most vicious and most wanted. Edwards can only say after he completes his review, at which the new list of the top ‘Ten Most Wanted’ will be generated, he said.

Gun-toting bad men are a dime a dozen in Jamaica, which is one of the challenges facing Edwards and his team at NIB.

There are many who extort, rob and rape, smuggle guns, push drugs, abduct young girls, and they kill – five a day on average, sometimes much more.

On the last weekend in August, for example, within a span of less than 24 hours – Friday at 6:30 am to Saturday at 12:05 am – 10 Jamaicans were shot to death in separate incidents in Kingston, St Catherine and Montego Bay, according to official reports from the Constabulary Communication Network (CCN), the police information arm.

In June alone, at least 144 people were murdered, making it the bloodiest month so far for 2005.

Following an all-time record high murders of some 1,471 last year, and unabated bloodletting since, the Lucius Thomas led-constabulary adopted a new policy of discontinuing the publication of weekly police statistics detailing the types of crimes committed, arrests, and seizures of drugs and weapons.

The cancelled distribution of the figures, however, has not stopped the killings. A compilation of murders from the daily CCN reports show that so far there have been more than 1,000 unlawful killings from January to August 31.

But the figure is conservative, as at the time of compilation not all daily reports were available, and an official request to CCN and Thomas’ office was unanswered up to Friday.

Since September, by a count based on the CCN daily reports, another 44 have been killed up to Friday (not including police shootings), an average of 4.9 persons per day.

No woman has ever made the national list of most wanted, though there was one female, said Edwards, who, several years ago, had made a divisional list for fraud.

“Women are usually accomplices,” said the intelligence chief.

“They more commit fraud and cons,” he told the Sunday Observer.

The last publication of the ‘Ten Most Wanted’ in 2002 had Joel Andem at the top of the list. Andem has since been captured by Operation Kingfish agents and is before the court.

But others like Donovan ‘Bulbie’ Bennett – the alleged leader of the St Catherine-based Klansman gang, wanted since 2001 and whom the police last linked to a triple murder in Portmore in October 2004 – remain on the loose.

The various police divisions each have their ‘wanted’ list of alleged extortionists and murderers.

There is also a National Register for Wanted Persons kept by the Jamaica Constabulary.

Those lists operate only as a guide to the NIB in its ranking of Jamaica’s ‘most wanted’.

St James, for example, has 92 people listed, but these include offences committed for minor offences such as smoking ganja and use of indecent language.

At least one female, Karen Jackson, wanted for wounding, listed, but three other names could have been women – Nicoy Bailey (offensive weapon), and Yoranda Daley (wounding).

The divisions, said Edwards, do not rank their troublemakers. That sifting and categorisation is left to the NIB, which generates a deeper level of intelligence than the regular crime investigation and homicide units in the police stations.

The data for the ’10’ is pulled together from a multiplicity of sources, such as case files, divisional wanted lists, intelligence generated by the different policing arms, from overseas law enforcement agencies with which Jamaica collaborates on international crime-fighting, and through Interpol, the liaison for which operates out of the NIB.

To make the list, the alleged criminal must have committed “very serious crimes,” said Edwards, adding that these include fraud, extortion and murder.

But they must also be “persons who appear to be dangerous to public order,” he added, as well as men whom the public perceive as a danger to society and puts pressure on the police to apprehend.

One of the challenges facing NIB is the pace at which the divisional lists change.

Many of the young men who live by the gun, also die by the gun, killed either in gang disputes or reprisals or in confrontation with the security forces.

The aggressive stance adopted by the constabulary ‘to take the fight to the criminals’ has resulted in continuous reports of “shoot-outs” by CCN, often resulting in the death, but sometimes arrests, of young men suspected of crimes and the erasure of such names from local listings of dangerous criminals.

On Sunday, August 14, for example, the police picked up Cleon Richard Thomas, also known as Tom, in Barbican.

Thomas was then said to be the most wanted man in St Andrew North, and had been sought in connection with some 10 murders, including that of a furniture trader who police say had been labelled an ‘informer’.

clarkelav@jamaicaobserver.com