IN 1997 political gangster, criminal, and Matthews Lane don, Donald “Zeeks” Phipps was arrested in relation to a shooting charge. Because his correct name was not yet known to the complainant, an identification parade had to be held to ground the allegations.

His arrest led to a riot across a section of the Corporate Area and certain parts of St Catherine. There were shoot-outs all over the place. Protesters burned a Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) armoured truck to cinders, police officers were injured, and lives were lost. It was total, complete chaos. You may have read about it, but I lived it.

Massive crowds of supporters descended on the Central Police Station, with criminals using women and children as shields. Strangely enough, these women and children seemed quite enthusiastic about being used as shields. In an effort to quell the crowds the police in charge of the station put Zeeks on a balcony with a bullhorn. He subsequently told them he was OK and asked them to go home.

The crowd immediately left. I have only seen Claudie Massop, Jim Brown, and Dudus Coke command such authority and obedience.

By putting Zeeks on that balcony the police officers, in effect, destroyed the identification aspect of the case as he was exposed to a large crowd and to television cameras. The reason they did so was not to destroy the case but rather to bring peace and order back to the Corporate Area and to stop what could potentially be a massacre if the crowd attacked the station and the police had to return fire.

It was a decision taken by a besieged authority in an attempt to save lives and save the economy, which was being destroyed by the riots.

This was the world that we lived in. This was Jamaica in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and up to about 2010.

After the Tivoli Gardens operation, commonly and annoyingly called The Tivoli Incursion, things kind of changed. Criminals weren’t so brazen after they realised that the Government, if necessary, would drop bombs on them. It still was bad, though, and until about 2023 Jamaica was still a very dangerous place to live.

The Zeeks phenomenon was not really unusual. We have had many occasions when gang leaders have demonstrated that the real power rested with them back in those days.

The Renato Adams infamous raid into Tivoli Gardens was a clear indication of what happens when both sides stand up and refuse to give ground. Lessons were learned that day as well. The cost of lives lost and the international image were significant but the message sent likely saved many more lives for about a decade.

We have had cases where courthouses were shot up in the 80s to signal the celebration of a gang leader being acquitted. A significant one was the acquittal of Lester Lloyd Coke in the 80s.

I can recall a bus driver being hauled out of the police station in Coronation Market and killed on the steps by Lester Lloyd Coke and his thugs.

The reality is that, since 1974 and up to 2010, we lived in a country where gangs ruled. The political arena in which this played out is sort of like a repeat of a soap opera. The Government of the time would be a strong supporter of the police, and the Opposition would be opposing the police.

Many police careers and many police lives were sacrificed on the altar of political ambitions. It really didn’t matter which party was ruling at the time. Same script, different cast.

We are currently in an era of gang capitulation. It is an opportunity to view both political parties and see whether they are supporting the police or the gangs. There is no middle ground.

The press was the pioneer in the movement to condemn political support for criminal gangs. It is we who made it “uncool” to appear to support gangs in any way, shape, or form. This occurred long before my time as a writer, but I have continued this practice. The public, the people, the electorate, though, have the real power.

The most pathetic thing in the world is an out-of-work politician, especially one who has been a minister. Politicians need to be elected into power so that they can form a government. This makes them important. If not, they are simply Opposition, parliamentarians being drained of their resources every day by their activists. That is the best-case scenario. If they didn’t win a seat they are just activists being drained by the people who tried to help them get elected.

If you don’t want to go back to an era where politicians marched with the caskets of killers then watch your politicians, both in Government and out. We are living in a time when there can be no allowance for support of racism, no allowance for support of totalitarianism, no allowance for support of colonialism, no allowance for support of imperialism and, just as importantly, no allowance for support of Jamaican criminal gangs.

The only reason that the 70s to the 2000s could occur was because of political support. The only reason politicians could get away with it is that the electorate allowed it.

We cannot, as a people, go back to what we were. It took too many good lives to get us to this point. Too much bloodshed, too many police officers’ careers sacrificed, too many innocent people slaughtered as informants.

What is required is an absolute condemnation of gangs by politicians in any of their rhetoric, whether in power or in opposition. This puts them in a ticklish spot. Gang zones are represented by regular men and women but the political seats are often determined by gang support. I understand the mountain that politicians who represent these seats have to climb. But I don’t care.

Any support of criminal gangs, especially that which manifests itself in the form of condemnation of the police force, cannot be accepted and should not be supported by the public.

I have lived the last four decades of gang rule. I have spent the majority of that time fighting it in one way or another. There is no reason that my grandson or your grandson should do the same.

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