AT the height of Tivoli Garden’s much rumoured infamy in the 1970s and 1980s, PNP enclaves like Arnett Gardens, Olympic Gardens, and the Wareika Hills in east Kingston, had no less violent reputations. The paramilitary-style operation of the Wareika Hills gunmen was a cause for concern to members of the security forces.

At the time, the People’s National Party too had their bad men and enforcers in the persons of Aston Thompson, nicknamed ‘Bucky Marshall’ for his deadly prowess with a sawn-off shotgun; Anthony ‘Starkie’ Tingle; George ‘Feather Mop’ Spence; and George ‘Burry Boy’ Blake.

Some of the others shot their way to the top of the ‘Police Most Wanted’ list but managed, with a little assistance from their friends in high places, to be de-listed years later.

Edward Seaga was prime minister from the end of October 1980 to March 1989. Between 1980 and 1988, the police, by themselves or backed by the military, hardly ever ventured into Tivoli Gardens.

During that period Tivoli’s reputation as a bad man’s hangout, grew.

So, after the 1989 general election, which Seaga and the JLP lost to Michael Manley and the PNP, the attention of the security forces were fully refocused on Tivoli Gardens.

When the security forces began raiding Tivoli for wanted men and their guns and ammunition, some police and soldiers taking part in the operations were given to excesses, ostensibly in their own defence, and also to prove their own toughness.

Some told exaggerated tales of their near-death experiences in Tivoli Gardens to prove how bad they were, as much as to prove how dangerous a place Tivoli was.

In the meantime, in other garrisons and inner-city communities, donmanship and the inherent violence that is its lifeblood, blossomed.

Some of these dons – unpoliced, or in some cases, aided and abetted by friends in the constabulary, or police on their payroll – became wealthy, influential and brazenly murderous, while raking in millions of dollars.

There have been successful raids by the security forces in Tivoli Gardens which have resulted neither in undue public attention nor outcry.

At 7:00 am on December 21, 1988, for example, 80 soldiers and 110 police personnel threw a dragnet around sections of Tivoli.

During a 10-hour operation, the police, led by senior superintendents Tony Hewitt and GC Grant, searched buildings and other premises and seized 216 cartridges, a Mac 11 machine pistol, 27 flare canisters, a .357 calibre Desert Eagle Magnum revolver and two 9mm semi-automatic pistols, three motorcycles, a car and a television set.

Three suspects were arrested for the guns. Another 243 people were detained for questioning.

The police said the searches were thorough and even the roofs of some high-rise apartments were searched. They met no resistance. And there were no complaints of the neighbourhood being indiscriminately shot up or citizens abused.

During the 1980s, the law and “justice” in Tivoli Gardens were administered by the dons and their enforcers, a practice that is still alive and well today in all the garrison communities – JLP and PNP – throughout Jamaica.

Seaga himself conceded in an interview a few years ago that Tivoli “has had its dark days.”

During the late 1970s and 80s ,Tivoli had the reputation, even among garrison communities, as being Public Enemy No 1.

Claudius Massop, Jim Brown and Carl ‘Biah’ Mitchell, in their time, ruled with iron fists, imposing discipline, some said, with much more than fists and feet.

Seaga, in the same interview said that much of the crime in the area was the result of inter-party rivalry.

“There is a very strong internal discipline,” he said, “and I can assure you that very often it is more safe than other areas. There is none of the chain-grabbing or the petty stealing.”

This was just five months before he was to send his ‘terrorist list’ to police commissioner Trevor MacMillan.

According to some accounts, the dons and their enforcers held court daily. Petty thieves and others who violated Tivoli’s unwritten but much-feared jungle law, were often “tried” at “Bump” in the community, and if “found guilty”, they were punished according to the severity of the “crime”.

It could range from a severe beating, to being shot in the knee for robbing a market vendor, or being executed for more serious “offences”.

Few persons, it was said, ever left its “torture chamber” alive.

Of course Tivoli was a pretty closed community, like all other garrisons, and had enjoyed a smooth, if unplanned, leadership succession.

It was largely ignored by the nearby Denham Town police station. The story, probably apocryphal, is told of a victim going to the Denham Town police station to report a crime, but was cut short by the station guard who asked her if she had already reported it to Jim Brown – suggesting that was where she should take her complaint.

Political and other ‘crimes’ of a more serious nature, involving other JLP communities, were dealt with internally.

So internecine violence between Tivoli Gardens and Rema, also known as Wilton Gardens, which at times reportedly sought to break away from the hegemony of Tivoli Gardens, was resolved “in house” even though it may have involved the deaths of several people.

One such dispute in the early 1980s which resulted in the massacre of several persons was settled by the political leadership over some bottles of Red Stripe beer.

But that sort of jungle justice is common to all the other garrison communities throughout the corporate area of Kingston and St Andrew – from Tel Aviv to Matthews Lane, from Arnett Gardens, also known as Concrete Jungle, to Trench Town, from the Wareika Hills to Dunkirk.

Bodies found in handcarts in downtown Kingston or dumped elsewhere on Kingston’s streets, did not all originate in Tivoli Gardens, but Tivoli always managed to be singled out for the sensational treatment.

For example, according to a police source, a few years ago the police found a “torture chamber” similar to Tivoli’s, in the PNP stronghold of Matthews Lane.

They videotaped it, but when they returned the next day for follow-up investigation, they found that it had been completely demolished and even the foundation had been dug up with a back-hoe.

That never made the 7 o’clock news. What seems to single out Tivoli Gardens from other garrisons on the gun-violence chart, is that police and soldiers always claim that the Tivoli operatives are the only ones willing to confront them -bullet for bullet – as opposed to the gunmen who they say retreat after the initial skirmish. Maybe even though gunmen are gunmen they don’t all hold the security forces in the same esteem.

But more often than not, whenever the security forces have gone into Tivoli Gardens, they say they were engaged in sustained gun battles some, according to them, lasting anywhere from a few hours to days – for example the July 7 to 10, 2001 confrontations.

Invariably Tivoli residents charge that the security forces go on rampages in the community, often firing several hundred bullets into buildings, sometimes taking innocent lives.

Tivoli residents say that over the years, except for the July 2001 operation, no policeman or soldier has ever been killed there, quite unlike other garrison areas.

After the October 4, 2005 police-military operation in Tivoli Gardens, the Observer asked Bruce Golding, MP for Kingston Western and leader of the JLP: Do you concede the right of the police to raid Tivoli Gardens? His response: “Absolutely. Not only a right, a duty for them to go in there. If they have reasons to feel that there are persons in there who are wanted by the law, then it’s not only a right – they have a duty.

williamsl@jamaicaobserver.com

The series concludes next week.