TIVOLI Gardens, roughly bounded by Spanish Town Road and Marcus Garvey Drive, Industrial Terrace and Pechon Street, in west Kingston, was like any other low-income housing scheme on Friday morning.

Shirtless young boys playing football in the street in the drizzle, little children occupying themselves with make-shift toys or wandering about their yards, women doing their laundry or other chores, or gathered in little knots chatting, men doing masonry work on a building, a truck delivering cooking gas, and men and women going about their business, walking, riding bicycles, driving their cars, using their cellphones or boys just sitting on fence walls shooting the breeze.

There was no visible sign of its characterisation as the “mother of all garrisons” by Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin, Chief-of-Staff of the Jamaica Defence Force.

Wayne Bartley, 40, a proud product of Tivoli Gardens – “I was born here, raised here, schooled here” – was firm in his defence of his community.

“People on the outside, hear this and hear that. I am not one who is going to say that criminals are not in Tivoli Gardens. I am not going to say that gunmen are not in Tivoli Gardens. Gunmen are everywhere. And if you show me an inner city or a community right now without a gunman or a criminal, I will show you God in heaven,” said Bartley, speaking with the Sunday Observer from the community centre.

“So, when Rear Admiral Lewin referred to Tivoli Gardens as the mother of all garrisons, I will answer him and say that I am one who is proud to be associated with the mother of all garrisons.”

Describing the comments made by the head of the military as “totally wrong”, Bartley said such comments only served to brand all of Tivoli’s residents as criminals and people who go against the law, saying this was far from true.

“This is a model community which they are trying to destroy politics-wise, trying to do all sorts of demonising things … and this is one of the things that is killing the community and killing the youth in the community.”

For instance, when a young resident who has graduated from university applies for a job, gives his address as Bustamante Highway, Building such-and-such, or Flat such-and-such, Tivoli Gardens, what do you think they do with his file?” he asks.

“Put it under the bottom, because they don’t want to see Tivoli Gardens.”

Tivoli has produced doctors, police personnel, nurses, soldiers, teachers, all people of good standing, said Bartley, “who have come out of this community.”

Bartley, a 5 foot 11 and 246-pound coach of basketball at Tivoli Gardens High School and another team in the community, says he acquired all his skills in Tivoli.

“I wouldn’t say that we are different from other people,

but we respect one another, we look out for one

another.

Yes, you know teeth and tongue will meet between neighbour and neighbour, but if there is any problem or crisis, like say a fire burn, there is always assistance from the same neighbour. If your child is sick in the night and needs to go to the doctor, you can call on your neighbour and he will give you a ride to take your child to hospital.”

In other words, a close and caring community, which looks out for each other.

He points out that in certain other communities “you don’t have that” form of respect for each other.

“For instance, I have grown up in the community and if I see a young man doing something wrong, I can talk to him and say, ‘Look, you are doing something wrong’,” said the coach.

Elsewhere, if that were to happen, the young man would argue “or do me something,” Bartley said.

Tivoli Gardens, nonetheless, has a reputation for extreme violence, but Bartley dismisses that by citing the lack of crime figures to support the claim.

“Well if it was, why would it be rated as having one of the lowest crime rates in Jamaica, both as a community and as an inner city?” he threw back.

Strangers, he said, were free to come an go in Tivoli as they like.

On Friday morning, however, the main entrances off Industrial Terrace were blocked with debris, the sole access being a road to the left of the old Queen’s cinema on Spanish Town Road.

Bartley also tells the story of a student at the University of the West Indies who selected Tivoli for her research project. Her supervisor asked her why Tivoli, and she said that was the only community that hadn’t been chosen by the other students.

The supervisor tried to dissuade her on grounds that it was too dangerous to go there as she would first encounter a big gate and the only way to get in would be to tell those manning it that she was going to the don.

But she insisted.

One day, he said, the student knocked on his door at the community centre, and enlisted his assistance with her project. She explained how easy it had been to get in – she had taken a bus to the Coronation Market, and then walked in.

“So I always say to people – as the Christians would say, ‘Come and taste and see that the Lord is good’ – I always say to Jamaicans out there, ‘Come mingle with Tivoli Gardens people … taste what we are tasting and you will see what Tivoli Gardens people really are’.”

In support of that, he said that taxi drivers will take passengers to Tivoli at any hour of night.

“You never hear of a taximan robbed or killed in Tivoli Gardens. Taximen are free to come and go any hours of the night … No one will even look at them.”

He said the previous government did a disservice to the youth of the community when it removed the maternity clinic and skills training centre from Tivoli.

“They should not have removed that training centre that we had … because young men and young women and girls, when they graduate but have no work, they could go there and get some form of training. All of those equipment were taken out, so all we have now are idle hands.”

He said the centre had taught welding, auto-mechanics, housekeeping and art and craft.

The young people are now involved in basketball, dancing, football, and there are plans to form a 100-member orchestra.

There is a computer lab upstairs the community centre and soon a homework centre will be added for students up to the tertiary level.

Also, there will be a programme to upgrade literacy levels throughout the community, encouraging dropouts – including girls who had to leave school because of pregnancy – to return to complete their education. They also want to bring in HEART Trust/NTA to train them for jobs.

“We want to educate the youth of the community, and especially to know their rights, so nobody can just trample on your rights like that,” said coach Bartley.

Growing up during Edward Seaga’s time as parliamentary representative of Tivoli Gardens (1962 to 2004), “things were pretty good to me,” he said.

Bartley has been involved in politics since he was 16, and says thanks to Seaga, he fulfilled his dream as a “people person”, to be a representative of the people, by being a member of Young Jamaica, the youth arm of the Jamaica Labour Party.

He has managed the constituency office and has done some work in the Denham Town municipal division.

Bartley relates two bad experiences he said he has had in Tivoli Gardens.

The first was in 2001 when, during a security forces operation, he was pinned down under a market stall on the Spanish Town Road for about five hours, with bullets flying all around him.

He screamed and swore that he was going to die.

During the ensuing days he saw many dead bodies on the ground, some rotting, dogs eating them. “I had never seen anything like that in all my life.”

His second was on October 5 during another security forces raid and curfew of the community.

“I was in my house with my wife and my (four-year-old) child. A policeman kicked off my door and stepped right in. I asked him if he had a search warrant, he said no, he had no time for that.

“I told him he could not search my house if he didn’t have a search warrant. He asked me who I worked with; I told him Mr Golding (Bruce, MP for Kingston Western and leader of the JLP).

“The policeman said, ‘Well, is people like you I want’. He handcuffed me and took me out of my house. I was so frightened. I said, ‘Why are you taking me? Where are you taking me? I didn’t do anything wrong. I am talking for my rights…’

“He put me into one of those little vans that they carry prisoners in; like four men packed in one small little cell and everybody rubbing against each other. That was one of the most terrible times of my life. They took me to Up-Park Camp (JDF headquarters) and asked me some stupid, stupid questions.”

Citing examples, Bartley said he was asked: Where do you stay when you go abroad? How much money do you have in your account? What is your NIS number? Your TRN number? Which school you attended?

He was at Up-Park Camp from shortly after 7:00 am to about 6:00 pm, when they dropped him off at the police post at Darling Street, near to Tivoli Gardens.

He said the policeman who kicked open his door had not identified himself as police. He asked who it was; the policeman didn’t answer. “I told him I didn’t know if it was a gunman out there running from you guys and want to come into my house for refuge. I didn’t know what was going on out there. If he had identified himself properly, then I would have opened the door.”

Reflecting on the incident, Bartley said: “Then again, you have good cops and bad cops. There were two policemen there and you can see they were well-brought up. They apologised to me, they apologised to my wife.

They were saying to the other policeman, ‘Cho, leave the guy alone, you can see that he is a decent man.’ And he turned to them and say, ‘You naw go tell me how to do my duty and you going to come off my team’.”

Tivoli Gardens is named after the old Tivoli cinema (now renamed Queen’s Theatre) on Spanish Town Road, near to one of the entrances to the community.

It has a population of about 9,000 people, living in 614 four-storey apartment blocks and about 500 flats. It is built on 25 acres of land.

“I love my community. I love the people of Tivoli Gardens. I am not going to say that there are all saints here or angels … but there is no criminality going on in Tivoli Gardens,” Bartley said.

“Recently, I left my house unlocked for two weeks and went to Ocho Rios and when I came back not one thing was missing … In some communities you can’t do that.”

Children, he said, are not raped or shot in Tivoli Gardens. Teachers there can reprimand or discipline children without fear of being assaulted by parents from the community.

If there is a problem at the schools, he said, counsellors from the community centre deal with it in consultation with the teachers and parents.

williamsl@jamaicaobserver.com

Next week a series on Tivoli Gardens continues with an historical perspective on police raids there since 1997.