OPERATION Kingfish, the police task force formed just over a year ago to bring down drug barons, gangsters and crime bosses, Thursday announced that it had dismantled the Gideon Warriors, a notorious gang whose members have been accused of various crimes, including murders, shootings, robberies, kidnappings and extortion.

This statement comes on the heels of the capture, earlier this week, of a senior member of the gang by members of the Operation Kingfish squad. The gang member’s name has been withheld because he is scheduled to face a series of identification parades and interrogation.

A Glock 9mm semi-automatic pistol, which has been linked to five other murders, was also retrieved in the operation, Kingfish officials said.

In the meantime, Sergeant Steve Brown, the spokesperson for Operation Kingfish, warned that the police would be going after more gangs islandwide.

“It doesn’t matter where you run to, we (Kingfish) are going to find and capture you,” he told the Observer.

Brown said the senior member of the Gideon Warriors was nabbed shortly after he came out of hiding.

He had gone underground, Brown said after Kingfish intensified its efforts against the gang.

Although the police say that the gang had been active for a long time, it shot to national prominence in early 2002 after the police, during a raid at the gang’s headquarters at Rawly Hill Gully – seven kilometres from Kintyre – uncovered video recordings of members parading with high-powered rifles and other weapons at a Christmas treat for children in the community.

The recording, which was played on national television, also showed gang members butchering a cow, and issuing threats against the police. The gang’s notoriety increased when the police linked it with the kidnapping and murder of Kingston gas station operator Sylvia Edwards.

Last month, the reputed former leader of the gang, Joel Andem, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for two counts of shooting and illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition, arising out of a shoot-out between police and members of the gang along Skyline Drive in Papine, St Andrew, last year. Andem was captured in May 2004 in the rural district of Clarksonville,St Ann, during a raid by cops from the Special Anti-Crime Task Force and the Military Intelligence Unit of the Jamaica Defence Force.

Kevin “Richie Poo” Tyndale, who is alleged to have taken over the gang after Andem’s capture, was sentenced to 90 years in prison on gun-related charges last September, after being captured during a police raid in the rural St James village of John’s Hall in February.