Jamaica: Negotiating Law and Order with the Dons
Rapley, John
"It may not be right," the off-duty police officer ously. "In the ghetto," someone here once told me, said, "but it does make my job easier." "the street is your living room." In the narrow,...
...When he saw me, he got out to say hello and It is a strange experience talking to a don about work...
...Rape victims, in particular, often prefer to report to the don rather than the police, as they are spared the harrowing wait and investigation of the formal legal system: There is a chicken coop in Jones Town where accused rapists are locked up while the don verifies the veracity of the victim's claims, then rounds up the gunmen who will beat and shoot the perpetrator...
...an Back in the 1970s, he told me, in the era of paternalistic Third World states, the government could provide lots of patronage to its followers...
...As a rule, the trade falls back on violence to enforce contracts...
...I once met a young man in a PNP community whose mother, charged with befriending Labor activists trying to penetrate the community, was shot 59 times and left to die alongside her baby daughter while he watched, hidden in a pile of laundry...
...For instance, it is all but impossible to settle scores with a drug mule-a smuggler, usually a young woman, who carries drug shipments abroad, the preferred method being to ingest condoms filled with cocaine-who absconds with a shipment upon reaching her destination...
...The chat...
...Consequently, the challenge for the police is not to restore order to communities in which it has broken down...
...less...
...The nig] was still and the portly man reclining in the dri seat had forsaken his stifling little house for the comfort of the car...
...The dons diss the government at their own risk...
...The election, he said, was not going to be violent...
...Adams and his men shot several known gunmen he surprised in a house in a Kingston suburb...
...and Finding the criminals was not the problem...
...Reneto Adams, who had become something of a folk figure in Jamaica, commanded a squad that had been hunting down criminals and killing them in gunfights...
...Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies...
...To the extent their pre- interests could be served, though, they were willing to nage of the all-powerful don has to be against the fact that his constituents and much for their loyalty...
...Far from being anarchic frontier towns ruled by the law of The competil the jungle, as middle-class Jamaicans commonly see them, the state a the garrisons are arguably gangs is among the safest communities in the country...
...Much is unsaid, while many of the decade's key players remain tight-lipped...
...There is still a feudal whiff to the law of the garrison, as lese majesty-"dissing the don"--remains one of its most serious offenses...
...However, the police reserve to themselves the right to take matters into their own hands should the dons fail to keep their end of the bargain...
...We talked about local poli- The ir tics, the upcoming election, chal- set lenges ahead...
...The dons, forced to fall back on their is the own ingenuity to generate the resources needed to ant of maintain their authority, were able to partially eman'ut an cipate themselves from their political masters...
...In the narrow, potholed lanes that threaded between zinc shacks and W e were sitting in a small, rustic bar in Craig breeze-block walls, where children played in their Town, one of Kingston's "garrisons...
...the challenges of globalization make this violence sometimes quite extreme...
...Moreover, they are not bound by the legal restrictions that rein in the police...
...It is that they are trying to reclaim a role for their law, and to restore or preserve what they can of their relevance...
...lived off the transatlantic drug trade...
...rison The drug trade started operating in the garrisons up to from their very early years, but appears to have taken Bob off in the 1980s...
...One can always concoct an explanation for why a prominent don or gunman was shot in the open...
...Rather, it is to remind people that these small "states" still exist, appearances notwithstanding, within an overarching state...
...He is a reg- Craig Town had a long history, the police station up ular columnist for the Jamaican newspaper, The Gleaner, and the road having been built by the British in 1911...
...Other they officers have since echoed this sentiment to me: They s. know who all the dons and gunmen are, know where Since to find them, indeed they could easily round them all mbia, up and throw them in jail...
...Such brutality obviously invites reprisals from the other community, something intensified by the tendency for garrison residents to form almost tribal loyalties to their parties...
...Fortunately for the Jamaican state, the gangs do not seek to smash the sovereignty of the nationalist elite that led the country to independence and embarked on an ambitious program of nation-building...
...Adams' activities eventually became too much to bear for a political elite which, while eager to preserve its dominance, does not want to see democracy eroded in the process...
...es of o had arly on in the Clinton administration, Washington pidly loaned some small helicopters to the Jamaican e era -government to prosecute the war on drugs...
...Although bitplayers in the nation's politics, they have nonetheless had a profound impact on the city's geography and culture...
...Music from the stereo above my head col- favored by the young men who congregated here and lided with the thumping of boomboxes in the street...
...It was to this my policeman-friend referred when he said the dons made his job easier...
...Provided the dons preserve order within the community, the police will turn a blind eye to the drug trade 28 NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 28CRIME, DISORDER AND POLICING that is their lifeblood...
...Jamaica lies on the routes that connect Coloi Latin America's chief maritime outlet for coc with the United States, by far its biggest mi Jamaican gangs found themselves uniquely positi 'own, to exploit the burgeoning trade in transshipment...
...In that turbulent decade, Jamaica was embroiled in an ideological war over the nation's young soul...
...Much of this negotiation is left to the police...
...Area leaders" in the euphemistic jargon, "dons" in the ghetto vernacular, these enforcers would maintain networks of gunmen, reputedly armed by the parties themselves...
...that the victims were hardened criminals was beyond dispute, but what upset people were reports that at least one victim was on his knees begging for his life when he was shot...
...Seen through postmodern lenses, the competition between the state and the drug gangs is a struggle between rival political elites...
...Human rights activists, mostly from the middle and upper classes, stridently demanded his dismissal, to which the police commissioner finally acceded...
...Yet in th of structural adjustment, the leaner state offered The dons were caught in the squeeze...
...their Nobody will bite the hand that feeds them...
...But the dons also ,ston...
...This particular man was an affable indiv whose avuncular appearance coexisted with a paredness to kill people with his own hands-though most times he dispatched his gunmen to do the deed...
...As the nning Jamaican state receded under the impact of fiscal austerity, private networks emerged to fill the breach...
...The dons support this state-within-a-state through a crude method of taxation, skimming revenue from the drug trade and drawing protection-money from the businesses-mostly small shops and bars-in the area...
...Given the effectiveness of the dons at maintaining order, many garrison residents prefer to deal with their don than the police when reporting local offenses...
...It may not be right, as my friend told me that night...
...But, of course, there are many dons to contend with...
...Anthony Harriott, a political scientist at the Mona Campus of the University of the West Indies and Jamaica's leading specialist on crime, has compared garrison communities to such social groupings as Albanian clans in their almost amoral loyalty to the community...
...The youths wh( grown up on a diet of BET and MTV had ra growing appetites for economic spoils...
...Determining who instigated garrison politics is difficult, as the answer depends on the party affiliation of the person asked...
...Loyalty, however, comes at a price...
...Jones Town, which stretches across a large chu West Kingston's real estate, from Admiral Towi Craig Town, past Arnett Gardens-another gar known to the locals simply as "Jungle"-and Trench Town, whose most famous native was Marley, is run by a triumvirate of dons...
...And, of course, when worse comes to worst, the disciplined army can be used to back them up...
...There are elements in the security forces who would like to crush the gangs...
...longs Colombian gangs who could get the goods to sea but oss a found it harder to smuggle them into the United States ht air found that Jamaican gangs offered a peculiar advanver's tage...
...In one particularly shocking case, 0 0 police officer patrols the Mountain View neighborhood of Kingston...
...The problem for the police, :aine, of course, is that Jamaica remains a democracy...
...Heavily concentrated in the working-class quarter of southwest Kingston, far removed from the spacious gardens of the city's middle-class neighborhoods, the garrisons cover perhaps a fifth of the city and account for about a tenth of the country's constituencies...
...Resisting arrest, engaging the police in a gun-battle, provided there are no witnesses-the police can usually get away with their own version of summary justice...
...Equally frustrating are efforts to construct a genealogy of the garrisons...
...Crimes reported to the don are punished swiftly...
...As such, they pose a more severe challenge to the sovereignty of the Jamaican state than any foreign power ever did...
...My host typified People strolled in and interrupted our conversation, the ambiguities that characterize life for most garriwhile in the market opposite, young men crowded son-dwellers: A decent man who loved police work, around domino and ludo tables and laughed boister- he had a son in the drug trade, and could not but cooperate with the drug gangs that controlled the commuJohn Rapley teaches in the department of Government at the nity...
...But what is clearer is the general pattern of the garrisons' development, along with their subsequent history...
...And if they cannot bring them to justice in the courts, then they will do it on the streets...
...The ima the all-powerful don has to be set against the fac garrison constituents demand much for their lo and have been known to turn on dons who c; deliver the goods...
...The don acts as judge and jury, while his gunmen are usually left the task of executioner...
...Depending on the crime, the punishment can range anywhere from a beating to death...
...oned When they are brought before judges to answer Vol XXXVII, No 2 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 200327 Vol XXXVII, No 2 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2003 27CRIME, DISORDER AND POLICING charges, no witnesses appear...
...The government can impose itself on any one community and restore order when need be...
...However, Jamaica remains a constitutional democracy...
...If it looked senseless from the outside, the violence had a cold logic to it...
...Those who want to smash the drug gangs arguably have an imperfect attachment to democracy and the liberal principles that underpin its operation...
...By reputation, he showed little mercy and took no prisoners...
...The limits of the tolerance for this approach were revealed in the spring of 2003 when the Jamaican police commissioner removed the state's leading "enforcer" from front-line duties and placed him at a desk job...
...This means that if order is to be preserved everywhere and at all times, the full weight of the Jamaican state must be kept in reserve, as a last resort, a sort of bad cop waiting to step in when the good cop-the local officer like my friend who relies on diplomacy and give-and-take over rum with the local don-throws up his arms and says he has lost control of the situation...
...since those who avoid the drug trade are unlikely to become victims of violence-although domestic violence remains a separate, and serious, problem...
...had cooperate with the state...
...drug gangs did not wish to eliminate the state, but did it his want to put checks on its power, thereby giving themidual selves space in which to operate...
...In consequence, rumor and speculation have plugged the gaps: Socialists (PNP activists) say Seaga was a CIA stooge while Laborites say Manley was a naive puppet manipulated by a Cuban-backed clique...
...The dons, in short, have carved out small fiefdoms for themselves where they can operate pretty much with impunity...
...But, he added, until Americans stop consuming the vast quantities of drugs that they do, the dons will continue to have a secure power base...
...Globalization had the world a different place...
...The 1970s casts a shadow over the island's subsequent history like that of a family secret...
...The dem stakes were no longer so high...
...In the 1980 election, which arguably capped the peak of garrison politics, over 800 people died in campaign violence...
...One i overlord, one is the enforcer and one, the occupy the car, is the "politician," not an actual official b articulate man skilled at resolving feuds and rui meetings...
...And, besides periods of turf warfare, life for most garrison residents is refreshingly crime-free...
...Michael Manley's People's National Party (PNP) had come to power in 1972 on a platform of social change and quickly drifted towards socialism...
...A sort of tacit agreement seems to have emerged in most communities between the police and the dons...
...Once a party secured a garrison, it flushed out supporters of the rival party...
...Ghetto justice is swift, though not always impartial: The dons reserve to themselves the right to violate the same laws they uphold for others...
...More than anyone-even more Jesus, to whom the dons frequently pay obei, with their visits to local churches-the dons fear own people...
...Faced with their growing demands the diminished supply of their political masters, had to find ways to generate additional resource, They found them in the emergent drug trade...
...Things changed since then, though...
...Any who commit the sin of supporting the other party on election day are expelled from the community...
...Put differently, whereas the Jamaican state was once able to impose its sovereignty, now it must negotiate it...
...Contract enforcement obviously must bypass the official legal system, which cannot possibly recognize agreements regulating a criminal activity...
...Those who could provide convicting testimony are either loyal to the don, or are simply too terrified of him and his henchmen to openly defy him...
...I once heard someone put it aptly when he said that at the end of the day, the country's biggest gang belongs to the government...
...The garrisons get their name from the fact that all residents must, at least outwardly, support the party to which the garrison belongs...
...In response, the Jamaica Labor Party (JLP), led by Edward Seaga, embraced the free market and resisted what it saw as a menacing revolution...
...There were many things he could do over beer and a game of dominoes, but there was nothing he could do about that...
...But there is an insistence that the Jamaican state will impose itself in the dons' communities only with their consent...
...Consequently, since elections determined which party would hold the cash cow over the next few years, elections were hotly contested...
...For some within the police establishment, this will not do...
...Accordingly, the rul inner-city politics had changed...
...When the price tag rose, or when the purchasing power of the client-in this case, the political directoratedeclined, the politics of the garrisons had to change...
...annot "The war on drugs is unwinnable," he lamented, than "because in whole stretches of West Kingston, chilsance dren are fed, clothed and schooled with drug money...
...There is no effort, as in other Third World countries (particularly in Africa), to contest the loyalty of citizens to the Jamaican state...
...But has published widely on Jamaican politics and neoliberal devel- opment, its contemporary identity had been crafted in the Vol XXXVII, No 2 SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2003 25CRIME, DISORDER AND POLICING 0 Police conduct a routine search at a checkpoint in downtown King 1970s...
...Thus, the police are not lying when they repeatedly al political remind people that Jamaica's crime statistics are misleading, es...
...And therein lay a problem...
...To do so, the parties built alliances with criminal elements on the ground...
...By terrorizing supporters of the rival party with seemingly indiscriminate acts of violence, gunmen from one party would try to send them fleeing and thereby erode the enemy's electoral base...
...Their tactics are crude...
...Given that the police obtain pretty good intelligence in the communities in which they operate, they know where to find their A Dp Des arch-villains...
...The party thus retained its constituents' loyalty by delivering resources-jobs, schools, cash-through a patronage system that rewarded its supporters...
...The dons have an between ri obvious interest in maintaining order, as security is one of the eli most important services their constituents seek...
...The shooting is not fatal: In a peculiar practice, the perpetrator gets to choose where in his body the shot is fired...
...pite the dons' power, the police reserve the right to intervene...
...In the 1970s, the two parties carved out a few safe seats for themselves by creating the garrisons, thereby boosting their vote in any given constituency...
...So, for the foreseeable future, the police in the inner city will continue to negotiate with the dons, persuading them to accede to the state and cooperate with the police...
...Thereby has emerged the practice of killing family on between members, often small children, in order to terrify potential con- d the drug tract violators from this course of struggle action...
...Given the large Jamaican populations in places cool like Miami, New York, London and Toronto, Jamaican gangs could use existing networks to penenk of trate security walls and move the drugs onto the n and streets of the world's major markets...
...The problem for the police is not that law and order have broken down in the garrisons, quite the contrary...
...market, Criminals, like everyone else, enjoy legal rights...
...This included the state's made front-line agents in the inner city, the police...
...More than yone, the don fears his own people...
...26 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASCRIME, DISORDER AND POLICING O ne evening, strolling through Jones I which is adjacent to Craig Town and be to the same political party, I came acr parked car whose engine was running...
...It was underwear and residents traded gossip and argued a hot night and rivulets of condensation ran loudly, that much was clear...
...Should, for instance, a particularly egregious violation occur, the police will employ force majeure to discipline a wayward don...
...moved into legitimate business, obtaining publicworks contracts-especially construction and roadbuilding jobs-from their political patrons to ensure not only their own fealty but that of their communities...
...There are armed squads in the Jamaica Constabulary Force known for their harsh tactics and fearlessness that can be sent into communities to flush out and intimidate the gangsters...
...When the decision was announced, the then-commisge of sioner of police-a professional man widely reputed t that as incorruptible-confided in a meeting at the univeryalty sity that it was irrelevant how much weaponry he got...
...ti V tE Of course, the drug trade has its own set of rules governing contracts, turf, payments and partnerships...
...However, it cannot do it in all communities simultaneously...
...down the ice-cold bottle of beer I was toying with at This was Platinum Corner, so-named for the jewelry the counter...
...The streets in the garrisons bustle 24 hours a day, as life carries on in the "living room" of its streets well into the night...
Vol. 37 • September 2003 • No. 2
