This series of articles is not intended to lionise or glorify the acts of criminals but to put a historical perspective on criminality in Jamaica, with the hope of shedding light on why the country is now teetering on the edge of lawlessness. Of significant note, as well, is the fact that the subjects of these stories die violently and very young.

AFTER the demise of Tivoli Gardens enforcer Claudius Massop, who died in a hail of police bullets, and his chief honcho, Carl ‘Byah’ Mitchell, who succumbed to a drug overdose, an opening was created for Lester Lloyd Coke, popularly known as ‘Jim Brown’. He stepped in to fill the breach left by the two men just before the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) landslide victory at the polls in 1980.

Although he was known by the name ‘Jim Brown’, Coke’s original moniker was ‘Ba Bye’, and those who knew him say he was a tough, no-nonsense type of man, who fought tooth and nail for his party’s honour.

Like Massop, Coke was nabbed by agents of the state, thrown behind bars and slapped with a murder charge. After a few months in jail, Coke was freed after the main witness to the murder was slain.

It was after his release from jail that Coke shed the moniker ‘Ba Bye’ and took upon himself the nickname ‘Jim Brown’, after the hall of fame American football player.

It is said that Coke honed his skills as a steel-nerved and feared enforcer during the politically turbulent 1970s, when the rules of engagement in politically volatile areas like the neighbouring constituencies of Western Kingston and South St Andrew demanded that the enemy be pushed back.

This scenario provided the perfect breeding ground for Coke and others of his ilk to evolve. Coke was responsible for keeping his political rivals, who would wish to attack his community and inflict violence upon its citizens, on the back foot.

Coke, like many before him, was the product of a divisive political system charted by early politicians.

But unlike Massop and Mitchell, Coke was wily enough to wean himself off political largesse and, perhaps, can be described as the first political enforcer to free himself from the economic shackles foisted on him and others of the same ilk by political power brokers.

After the JLP victory in 1980, Jamaica, which was one of the major suppliers of marijuana to the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, evolved into a major transshipment port for the deadly drug, cocaine. The JLP had chosen to join the US side in the Cold War, and at that government’s behest, embarked upon a major ganja eradication campaign.

The anti-marijuana initiative caused an economic fallout among the growers and traders of the illegal crop and forced drug traffickers to seek alternative means to make their money.

Cocaine commands a much higher market price than ganja and proved the perfect foil for drug traders who diverted their skills to satisfying an overwhelming demand for the drug, especially in the United States.

It was during this time that Coke, along with his confidante, Vivian Blake, developed a massive drug-running empire, with bases in Florida, New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Chicago and other parts of the US.

United States federal authorities would be jolted by the brutal dispensation and modus operandi of the Jamaican gangsters, among them the Spanglers Posse – bitter enemies of the Shower Posse – whose original members hailed from Matthews Lane and other nearby areas affiliated to the People’s National Party.

The Shower Posse, so called because of their penchant for spraying their enemies with bullets, were so feared by their rivals abroad that the US Government was forced to launch a massive counter offensive aimed at destabilising the gang.

The Spanglers Posse were no less brutal, and the political violence which had been bred since the 1940s played itself out in the streets of North America. That gang was also a target of police investigations.

While Blake was the brain behind the empire, Coke provided the brawn and, in the process, gained enough wealth to ignore the feed in the political trough which was dispensed in too little amounts by political representatives.

But his wealth did not mean that he would lapse in his political duties.

In 1984, Coke reportedly led a team of men from his stronghold of Tivoli Gardens into Wilton Gardens, also known as Rema, then a JLP-aligned community run by orders from the bosses in ‘Garden’ (another name for Tivoli).

For years Rema was regarded as a sort of bastard cousin of the more developed and powerful Tivoli Gardens. But Rema had itself spawned fierce street warriors who were hardened in the art of criminal warfare by their daily experiences living in an area which was the first line of defence against PNP thugs who launched repeated attacks from Arnett Gardens.

A disagreement between persons from Tivoli Gardens and Rema prompted Coke and his gang’s foray into Rema. When the gang left, seven men lay dead.

Soon after, police arrested Coke and charged him with seven counts of murder. But Coke was again freed after no one came forward to testify against him.

On the day of his release, heavily-armed men celebrated by firing a barrage of gunshots in the air directly in front of the Supreme Court, sending police officers, court staff and members of the bar scampering for cover and cowering in fear.

Coke was held high by the crowd and carried back to his fortress in Tivoli Gardens.

Soon after, then prime minister and member of parliament for West Kingston Edward Seaga, along with other JLP officials, visited Rema and appealed to the residents to ‘let bygones be bygones’.

With his legal troubles in Jamaica behind him and his political connections rock solid, Coke now had time to continue his illegal quest at wealth creation.

In 1986, federal authorities in the United States reported that the Shower Posse had spread their wings to over a dozen US cities and were raking in a substantial portion of the 25 per cent of the billion dollar illegal drug trade that Jamaican gangs earned.

But as the Shower Posse grew in stature, so did the federal investigation into their activities, and in November 1988, 53 Shower Posse members were arrested in New Jersey on drug distribution charges.

A month before, a federal grand jury indicted 34 members of the Shower Posse, including, Coke, Blake and Blake’s two half-brothers, Errol Hussing and Tony Bruce.

Coke managed to remain a free man until the beginning of the 1990s when international police investigations began closing in on the Shower Posse.

Richard ‘Storitella’ Morrison, a leading posse member, was ‘captured’ in Jamaica by US authorities and illegally whisked abroad to stand trial.

In February 1991, Coke was arrested by local police and locked up at the General Penitentiary, now called the Tower Street Adult Correctional Facility, after the US Government requested that he be extradited to that country to answer to murder and drug trafficking charges.

Coke’s bid to acquire a special leave to appeal was rejected by the United Kingdom Privy Council and after a year of legal wrangling the writing was on the wall.

While Coke languished in prison, his son, Mark Coke, also known as ‘Jah T’, was shot dead as he rode a motorcycle along Maxfield Avenue on February 2, 1992.

Jah T was in the process of preparing for a memorial dance in honour of Claudius Massop when he was killed.

The killing of Coke’s son sparked a new round of political bloodletting and, in the weeks that followed, shootings occurred in Hannah Town, Arnett Gardens, Denham Town, Rose Lane and Matthews Lane, prompting then prime minister Michael Manley to call for a meeting with Seaga. The violence also sparked a march by a group of churches through the affected communities.

But the violence would also spread abroad.

The Florida-based website, www.emergency.com, posted this report in August, 1992.

Miami, FL – A drug gang war that started in Kingston, Jamaica, early in 1992 may have recently spilled over into the streets and bars of Miami. Reportedly, an early Saturday morning nightclub shooting of twenty-two (22) people involved members of the Jamaican “Shower Posse”. Gang Crimes officers of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office say that the nightclub killings may have been retribution for the February killing of Mark Coke, a leader of the Jamaican “Shower Posse” drug gang. The “Shower Posse” supposedly gets its name from the “shower” of lead it shoots at rival gangs.

An agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms says that Saturday’s shootings “had all the earmarks” of a Jamaican “Posse” hit. Special Agent Joe Vince was quoted by the United Press International as saying, “the posses are the most vicious organised crime group in the United States today”. Capt Al Lambeti of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office said that the shooting was a “…perfect textbook example of how the posse does business”.

The younger Coke’s murder was rumoured to stem from a dispute between Shower Posse members and members of the Black Roses Crew, which was then led by William ‘Willie Haggart’ Moore, who would eventually be killed, at a weekly dance called ‘Beachline’ held at the Hellshire Beach in St Catherine.

Popular dancer, Gerald ‘Bogle’ Levy, was reportedly doused with alcohol during the dispute which was diffused by police officers who were on the scene.

Three weeks later, the very day his son was buried, Coke was burnt to death in a mysterious fire inside his cell.

Unconfirmed reports suggest that the notorious gangster committed suicide because he realised that he would be handed over to the US authorities, but this claim has been refuted by others who say his death was as a result of a botched escape attempt. Still others say Coke was murdered to keep him from spilling the beans to the Americans.

Responses

Just wanted to say carry on the good work of informing Jamaicans of our past and how it shapes our present and future…. I missed a few of your articles and the archive on the Observer website does not allow access to same.

By any chance do you have a link to a blog with all the articles… if not.. consider doing one.

Thanks

Courtney Bowen

ridim1027@yahoo.com

Mr Walker,

I myself left Jamaica in 1974, and before I left I would hear mention of some of these names. I knew they were thugs but that was the extent of it. Some of the names I never heard of until I came to the United States and met people from some of those communities and the media. They never got into details like you did in your articles. As a matter of fact, I was at a house party in the 70s and there was a woman there with one of these notorious men’s name tattooed on her arm.

These articles that you write are very informative, especially to those of us like myself who were ignorant to what was really going on in Jamaica in that time period. It’s a kind of history that people from Jamaica and their offspring should know about, as strange as it might sound. I think you should compile these article in a book and publish it. I just wish that there were pictures to go with these names. I wanted to see what they looked like. What about their relatives, I wonder what was their reaction? These young thugs should learn from those that preceded them. When you live by the gun you also die by the gun.

I have learned a lot from your articles. all I have to say is, my brother, please continue publishing these articles. I look forward to reading the Observer on line on a Sunday. Thanks for the information.

PReid1@nyc.rr.com

Hi,

I am a Jamaican living in Toronto and I wanted you to know that I am impressed with your series. I think you are doing a great work by researching the roots of our garrisons in Jamaica. You are not afraid of exposing the faults of both political parties for being involved in the gang development and you do a great job of acknowledging the place these gangsters in our society, both as enforcers and protectors.

However, if there is one aspect of your article that I would like to critique would be the structure and flow of the story. In reading your article it seemed a hodge podge of facts were put together, but I did not see a chronological order nor flow of events from paragraph to paragraph. To me it seemed you ran with an idea, finished it and realised there was another idea to input so you just threw it in the next paragraph. For your next article I would hope you put together a better flow, but thanks for the education. It is an important topic to discuss.

Regards,

Interested Torontonian

waynekash@gmail.com