FOR many, Tivoli Gardens, the inner-city JLP stronghold which is the heart of the constituency of Kingston Western, up to some years ago, was defined by sheer ‘badness’ and violence. They simply feared everything to do with it.

The perception equating it with the centre of political violence and criminality was reinforced by the security forces, perpetuated by the news media, and vigorously encouraged by the political rivals of the community’s creator and mentor, Edward Seaga.

Seaga had been the constituency’s Member of Parliament for the last 42 years, up until April 14, 2005, when Bruce Golding, who succeeded him as the new JLP leader, also took over as the MP.

The top echelons of the police and the military maintain that Tivoli Gardens is still a major command and control centre of organised violence, drug-dealing and lethal weaponry and is a haven for criminal gunmen, although their own statistics do not bear this out well, if at all.

Police now say that West Kingston is among the lowest crime areas in volatile downtown.

The civic and political leaders of Tivoli Gardens insist that the violent image is outmoded, inapplicable and irrelevant, that the community has been substantially refocused and rebranded, but is still being unfairly stigmatised by people bearing political grudges.

There is no doubt that Tivoli has made its contribution to crime statistics over the years, notwithstanding the majority of decent, law-abiding people who call it home and have played their part well in the development overall, of the Jamaican society.

On Tuesday, September 27, 1994, Seaga sent a news release to the media concerning shootings which had occurred in the constituency the weekend before, resulting in five persons dead and 12 wounded.

The statement read in part:

“I have given to the Commissioner of Police, a list of 13 men in Tivoli Gardens and Denham Town who are the source of the violence in West Kingston. I have advised the commissioner where they can be found. So far, six of these 13 men have been taken into custody by the police where (sic) they are being held pending charges. I will continue to advise the police where to find the rest.

“The ringleader, Michael Coke, alias Dudus, son of the late Lloyd Coke, ‘Jim Brown’, is still at large.

Lester Lloyd Coke, nicknamed Jim Brown, after the huge American football star-turned-movie actor, had been the ranking don in Tivoli, having succeeded Claudius Massop.

Massop, with two other men, were shot dead by the police on February 4, 1980, near to Tivoli Gardens.

The 10 or 11 policemen involved were charged with murdering him and put on trial but were all acquitted.

“I will be leaving the island today until the end of this week. If the police fail to take him into custody by the end of the week, I will be publishing a full-page ad early next week with a reward of $25,000 for his capture.

“The violence must end now, once and for all, and I will take every step possible to ensure that the residents of West Kingston and the neighbouring communities are free from fear.

“If the other political leaders will take this same step and turn in their gang leaders to the police, we will create a new Jamaica overnight,” Seaga said 11 years ago.

But at the time, all the other political leaders, MPs and others in the top echelons of both the PNP and the JLP, scoffed at Seaga’s suggestion and washed their hands like Pontius Pilate, proclaiming that they knew no gangsters, gang leaders or criminals in their constituencies.

Some gloated that Seaga had lost control of his constituency.

To some extent, they were right.

But unlike Seaga, the other MPs don’t appear unduly bothered by the daily killings that define their garrisons, except when reporters and TV cameras are in their area.

Seaga didn’t stop with merely issuing his list of terrorists. In a radio interview in New York the following day, he threatened to quit the Kingston Western constituency he had, up to then, been representing in Parliament for 32 years, if nothing was done to end what, he said, was the violence and brutality that was taking place there.

He gave a chilling account of gang violence in his constituency and chided then police commissioner Colonel Trevor MacMillan for denying that he (Seaga) had turned over to him a list of the names of 13 gangsters operating in West Kingston, and accused the commissioner of being preoccupied with his own ego.

MacMillan shot back that the police could not act on names or nicknames alone, but needed statements and evidence to substantiate the allegations.

Tom Tavares-Finson, Christopher Coke’s lawyer, said his client refuted all allegations of wrong-doing, adding that he was a law-abiding citizen of West Kingston available to cooperate with the police.

The police said then that Coke was not wanted by them.

Apparently, he still is not wanted by them, though he was picked him up at his suburban house in upscale St Andrew on October 4, simultaneously as the security forces were raiding Tivoli Gardens.

Coke was charged with possession of a ganja spliff (cigarette).

For that he was fined $200 in court a week later.

Coke, reputed to be a wealthy businessman, had apparently patched up relations with Seaga over the years, or at least they had managed to co-exist peacefully in Tivoli after Seaga’s revelation.

Police said the violence Seaga had referred to, had occurred during clashes between rival factions of the JLP.

Seaga said the situation had nothing to do with politics and that the gangsters he named were neither political organisers nor activists.

When he took over the Kingston Western constituency in 1962, he said, JLP supporters there were being gunned down and raped every day.

“I built for them (Tivoli Gardens) what people call an enclave- and I make no apology for that – so that they could walk in peace and that their daughters wouldn’t have to be raped and that they could walk without fear and attend meetings and go on and do their business at night. West Kingston used to be a thriving community at night with their (sic) little shops and bars and people on the street. It’s a ghost town at night. Now 32 years later, to see this return, not from the People’s National Party but from the people themselves who are supposed to protect them…”

He suggested that the brutality and violence then being experienced in the trouble spots, and in Jamaica generally, “can come to an end if we can crack this nut and set the pace and set the direction… There is no more than maybe 500 of these types of men throughout Jamaica that are holding the entire country to ransom.”

He said the 13 were in his area but there were similar gangsters in Matthews Lane, Hannah Town, Southside, eastern Kingston, western St Andrew, southwest St Andrew, southern St Andrew, in Montego Bay and Ocho Rios.

But that was 11 years ago.

williamsl@jamaicaobserver.com

(The series continues)