RESIDENTS of several communities along Spanish Town Road in Kingston yesterday staged a noisy demonstration to protest against last Friday’s fatal shooting of a gang leader and Thursday’s detention of 53 people.

The noisy protesters, who congregated at the entrance to the volatile Crescent and St Joseph roads along Spanish Town Road, lambasted the police of unfairly targeting their communities and accused them of killing their community leader in cold blood last Friday.

The gang leader, identified as Dave Sterling, alias ‘Machine Man’, was shot dead when he allegedly pointed a firearm at the police along Collie Smith Drive in Trench Town.

Among the 53 detained in the early morning raids by the police on Thursday was a man who the police said was earlier this week ‘installed’ as head of the Rat Bat gang, less than a week after the death of Machine Man.

Police did not release the name of the reputed gang leader but said he was behind a series of criminal activities in Kingston, including murder, rape and extortion.

The detainees, which include two women, were still being processed late yesterday afternoon.

Yesterday, the placard-bearing demonstrators accused the police of targeting their communities, even as a group of officers kept watch from the opposite side of the road.

“Them a terrorise we and we not warring with anybody,” a lanky youngster said. “Machine Man take care of we; is him send whole heap of people pickney go school and them kill him, for what?” a bleached-out face woman asked.

“Them come lock up the people them from yesterday (Thursday) and is them same people keeping the peace in the place,” said another woman, clad in a skimpy outfit as she stood at the entrance to Delacree Park.

Sections of Spanish Town Road, Crescent and St Joseph Roads and Coral Lane, where the raids were carried out on

Thursday morning, have been tense since Machine Man’s death last Friday.

According to the police, the Rat Bat gang and men from other sections of the community located between Spanish Town and Waltham Park roads have been involved in an ongoing fight for turf.

More than a dozen people have been murdered in the bloody rivalry since the start of the year, the police said.