MAY PEN, Clarendon — Despite a high murder rate and challenges in tackling other serious crimes, the Clarendon police are patting themselves on the back for dismantling two of the parish’s most notorious criminal networks.

According to superintendent in charge of the Clarendon division, Dayton Henry, the two gangs — ‘Lion Paw’ and ‘Web Lane’ — account for most of the murders and other illicit activities that have plagued the parish in recent years.

The Lion Paw gang, which Henry said originated in Spanish Town, St Catherine, but which later extended operations to the Effortville community, was cheating the Clarendon Parish Council out of millions of dollars annually, as it took control of the May Pen Bus Park and established an extortion racket.

“They were the ones who controlled the bus park, making some $20 million a year from collecting extortion money from transport operators. The parish council could not collect even one cent,” Henry said.

“We had a mixed year,” said Henry, who based his assessment on data showing that homicides numbered 163 in 2008. “Today, we are happy to report that we are about six or seven per cent down,” Henry said.

He said since the dismantling of the Lion Paw gang, normality has returned to the bus park and it is now under the stewardship of the parish council.

“We studied their pattern and after six months we launched an operation in which we dismantled the gang. The leader, Gregory Thomas, otherwise called ‘Soul’, was taken out on March Pen Road in a joint operation between the Clarendon and Spanish Town police. Senior members of the gang were arrested and the others fled the territory,” said Henry.

“Since then, the parish council has returned to the bus park and they have been collecting millions of dollars in revenues. And if you go down there you would see signs [installed] which weren’t there for many years,” he added.

The Web Lane gang made Palmer’s Cross and Mocho its stomping grounds and was responsible for at least 11 of the 156 murders committed in the parish in 2009, the police said.

“We dismantled some gangs. We have made significant progress and the men and women who I led in 2009, we are proud, because if we had not taken out that gang we would be in the red in terms of homicides,” Henry said.

In July, while speaking at a crime forum at St Gabriel’s Anglican Church Hall in the parish, Security Minister Dwight Nelson expressed concern about the high crime rate in Clarendon which he described as one of the “fast-growing crime citadels in Jamaica”. Nelson cited police statistics which showed that between January 1 and July 12, 2009, there were 538 reported incidents of major crimes in the parish.

Henry said more than half of the murders recorded in the parish last year were caused by inter-gang rivalry, contract killings and other illicit activities. He also said that many squatter communities in and around the parish capital, May Pen, were breeding grounds for criminals.

“We have four gangs that are responsible for 64 per cent of the homicides. What happens [is that] most of these homicides come from inter-gang rivalry in which they kill each other. The others come from contract killings”, Henry said.

“Some of the homicides that are committed in the parish — the persons who are killed — when you look at the victim profile it is because of their own lifestyle. Some are not from the parish… some come here fi come buy gun and buy drugs and lose dem life”, added the former member of the Anti-Corruption Branch.

“Most of the housing stock within May Pen and the outskirts are squatter communities and it is very difficult to police,” added Henry. “There are no proper roads and it provides a haven for these criminals. Many (criminals) from elsewhere also come in and set up these shacks and hide, and unless somebody tell you that something is happening they will stay there and create mayhem.”

In the same vein, the superintendent also praised the relationship between his team and residents.

“When I came here in June 2008 and was making my rounds in the many communities that I have toured — from May Pen to Crofts Hill to Frankfield to Lionel Town and Milk River — the people would say, ‘We don’t trust the police’. I gave them my cellular numbers and was able to take control of the intelligence machinery that operates in the division, and today I’m happy to report that the reservoir of information that we are getting, we are able to enrich the National Intelligence Bureau database,” Henry said with pride.

He also touched the issue of the guns-for-drugs trade between criminals in the parish and their counterparts in Haiti.

“Since the start of the year (2009), we recovered maybe about 2,000 to 3,000 pounds of compressed ganja that was scheduled to be shipped away. Because of the constant pressure that we put on them, some of them have shifted from Rocky Point down to the Exeter Beach down in Race Course and we recover some 300 pounds of ganja”, noted Henry, adding that “we will continue to exert pressure on them.”