MEMBERS of the Maxfield Taxi Association yesterday staged an early morning protest on Maxfield Avenue against what they said were continued acts of aggression towards them by individuals along the road.

The taxi operators, who began gathering at the Maxfield Avenue/Lincoln Avenue intersection at approximately 7:00 am, said they were fed up with thugs in the area who constantly preyed on them.

“There are a set of hooligans down the road (Maxfield Avenue), by the intersection with Spanish Town Road and they feel like they can take the men (taxi operators) off the road and make the taxi men carry them anywhere they want to go, and if they don’t do it then they (the men) come with badness,” an irate taxi operator told the Observer.

The incidents, he said, had so far resulted in one death. According to him, Uriel Plummer, who plied the Half-Way-Tree to Maxfield Avenue route, was dragged from his car and severely beaten by a group of men while on duty in the area late last month.

He said Plummer, 45, who was affectionately called ‘Jah B’, succumbed to his injuries two weeks later.

“They pulled him (Plummer) off the road and beat him because him never want to go where they want him to go. We don’t know if he acted belligerent to them or what, but they beat him. And later he succumbed to his injuries in hospital,” the taxi operator explained.

Another taxi operator told the Observer that these acts of aggression continued despite several meetings between the Maxfield Taxi Association and residents within the communities, during which a truce was allegedly agreed on. But he said continued threats of assault coupled with acts of extortion had left them at their wits’ end.

“We just need some kind of media exposure to what is going on here because it can’t go on like this,” he said.

But yesterday, an officer at the Kingston West Police Division – which shares the policing of sections of the Maxfield Avenue community along with the St Andrew South Police Division – said no complaints of assault were made to the division prior to yesterday’s demonstration.

He said however, that investigations were still being carried out into Plummer’s beating and subsequent death, and that the police were awaiting confirmation about his cause of death.