In May last year when residents of Tivoli Gardens barricaded the community, took to the streets and declared that Christopher “Dudus” Coke was, like their proverbial God, closer than a brother to them, many must have realised that the Tivoli Gardens that they had known for years as a heavily armed, highly organised political garrison – always able to hit back to the same extent that police and soldiers could fire bullets at it – was on the way to playing its last card.

First, the Americans wanted Dudus, and America would always get what it wanted. Second, the JLP administration had embarrassed itself among Jamaicans at home and abroad, and to the international community, with the prime minister by his actions appearing to be the defence counsel for Dudus, some were seeing us as a pariah state.

In the end, the security forces made a most violent incursion on Jamaica’s most heavily armed community resulting in 73 deaths, as the official numbers state. In the immediate months following, murders fell by an amazing 42 per cent, but only those who lived in the land of wishing and hoping believed that that rate could be sustained for any reasonable length of time.

The January 6, 2011 press release from the communication arm of the JCF states the following: “All major crimes (murders, shooting, rape, carnal abuse, robbery, break-ins, and larceny) declined in 2010, when compared to 2009, by an overall seven per cent. This is the first time since 1999 (eleven years) that the national crime statistics are showing a reduction in all major crimes.

“Murder, which is considered to be the key crime indicator, decreased by 15 per cent in 2010 compared with 2009. There were 1428 reported murders in 2010 against 1682 in 2009, a decrease of 254 in 2010 compared with 2009.”

The important factor in all of this is the fact that 2010 represents the first time since 1999 that there has been a reduction in all major crimes. One would have hoped that the release would have mentioned, even in two sentences, the factors operating in the 1998 to 1999 crime comparison along with the reduction recorded then. That aside, the nation is grateful for small mercies.

One of the sore points that has dogged this nation for much too long is the cleared-up rate of murders. In Jamaica it is abysmally low – 21 per cent in 2009 and a marginal percentage point increase in 2010: 27 per cent. It is my understanding that developing short-term strategies on this troubling aspect of our crime-fighting approaches is pretty much impossible. Good detectives are essentially bright people with sufficient training and on-the-job exposure, plus the imagination needed to live vicariously in the minds of the perpetrators of murders.

In the longer term, ACP Les Green is driving the murder reduction strategy by training detectives in better practices. Having trainers come to Jamaica instead of the usual case of sending our brighter detectives abroad is one of the strategies being employed. In the area of the possession of the equipment needed to deal with forensics, there has been marked improvement.

Why has there been this reduction, though single-digit and almost inconsequential, based on where we are and have been? Prior to 1970, Jamaica’s murder rate was less than that of the USA. In 1971 we murdered 152 of our people. In 2009 we broke the record set in 2005 (when we were the murder capital of the world – 1674 killed) by killing 1680 Jamaicans.

It appears to me that there has been a better approach to policing in general and a tightening of operational procedures, plus Commissioner Ellington has seemingly imposed his leadership on the JCF. Very important has been the cooperation of the JDF with the police.

It is my view, however, that the ferocity of the incursion in Tivoli Gardens cannot be ruled out as a causative factor in the 15 per cent reduction in the murder rate. Many theories abound as to what actually took place in Tivoli Gardens in May last year. Some believe that as many as 200 people were killed.

What cannot be denied is that the community had a trained army of gunmen. During the May operation, I was in touch with a 25-year-old shooter on the ground. As he told me, he had a knapsack on his back filled with ammunition, an Uzi in one hand – his main weapon, and an automatic pistol strapped on his waist. “Wi nuh have no problem if ammunition finish. Wi know weh fi go fi load up.”

Many gunmen all over the island saw that very ferocious raid – and determined in their own way that if the security forces could penetrate the “mother of all garrisons”, known to operationally house the don of all Jamaican garrisons and do it in so “total” a fashion by killing 70-plus – what would be the situation with them operating in their little zinc-lined lanes with more “demi-dons” than dons?

The security forces with their newfound resolve in the immediate months following May 2010 drove a similarly newfound fear in the minds of Jamaican gunmen, and that by itself resulted in the huge and much publicised 42 per cent decrease in murders. While there can be no doubt – certainly to me – that Tivoli Gardens was not only an incubator of organised criminal activity which kept Tivoli and proximate areas extremely safe, there was, as far as I am aware, no Tivoli “law” decreeing that that the criminality (extortion, murder for hire, drugs, etc.) could not be exported to other communities in Jamaica.

One area in which the JCF should be congratulated is reprisal killings. Most of Jamaica’s murders fall outside of domestic, drug and gang-related. Instead, they occupy the space “other criminal acts”(38 per cent of total murders) and “not yet established”(31 per cent). In other words, 69 per cent of the murders occur quite possibly because “man diss man”, a girlfriend was “borrowed” or an uncle in the 1980s murdered one’s father, and long-term, generational reprisals are on.

Because the police have been on the ground with their ears close to it, there have been calls – some made public – for men to report to the police. This proactive approach is often an attempt by the police to stave off expected reprisals after murders have taken place.

Commissioner Ellington must be congratulated on his work so far, while at the same time his operatives have to explain how two of them led an operation accompanied by about 30 heavily armed soldiers to capture one of Dog Paw’s chief “officers” on January 27, Nicholas “Fire Key” Nesbeth, only to let him go on January 29 via an “administrative error”. Absolutely incredible!

One senior policeman told me yesterday, “The intelligence-gathering capacity of the JCF has increased exponentially over the last five years.” The adverb “exponentially” might have been the wrong word to use, but we get the drift.

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