Claudius Massop: Feared political enforcer
BY KARYL WALKER
Sunday Observer staff reporter
walkerk@jamaicaobserver.com
Sunday, October 28, 2007
In the 1970s when political turbulence threatened
to shake the core of the nation, a number of political enforcers and
henchmen came to the fore. It was an era when political representatives
armed their constituents and used the strong arms and ruthlessness of
the political enforcers to bring out voters and ensure that constituents
toed the line.
One of the most infamous and feared of the political enforcers of that decade was the Tivoli Gardens don, Claudius Massop.
Massop had risen through the ranks of the criminal underworld to become one of the most feared names in western Kingston.
In 1976, a state of emergency was called by the then prime minister, Michael Manley, in the face of rising political tension.
Supporters of then Opposition Leader Edward Seaga's Jamaica Labour
Party and Manley's People's National Party engaged in a bloody political
struggle which began before the 1976 election and ended after the JLP
won the 1980 election.
While the violent political atmosphere had its genesis in conflicts
between the parties from as early as the beginning of the two-party
system in the 1940s, political violence spiralled out of control in the
1970s.
Five hundred persons, including Massop and other prominent members of
the JLP - among them present government ministers Pearnel Charles and
Olivia 'Babsy' Grange - were accused of trying to overthrow the
Government and were detained, without charges, in the specially created
Gun Court detention centre at the Up Park Camp military headquarters.
Massop was released when the state of emergency was lifted in January
1977. At the time he was 29 years old, and immediately became the top
henchman in his home base of Tivoli Gardens.
Police records show that Massop had a long history of run-ins with the law.
He was arrested on several counts of murder, illegal possession of
firearm, shooting with intent, driving without a driver's license and
perjury.
However, Massop was only incarcerated once for illegal possession of a firearm.
In Tivoli Gardens, Massop was known to be a tough enforcer who was not
afraid to discipline anyone who fell out of line, and is remembered for
his strict, no-nonsense attitude.
One elderly woman who claimed to have lived in Tivoli at the time of his
reign in the criminal underworld described Massop as an easy-going
individual who never went out of his way to harm anyone.
"He was a nice person who anyone could approach, but he did not take
kindly to rapists and petty thieves and dealt with them rough," the
woman told the Sunday Observer. "He was the one who set the real order
and discipline in Tivoli Gardens. 'Claudie' Massop was also our
protector and he defended the community from attack from our enemies in
Matthews Lane and other PNP areas."
However, one former cop described Massop as a heartless killer whose
political connections sometimes rendered police officers powerless to
apprehend him.
"That man was no saint," said the ex-cop who spoke on condition of
anonymity. "There are many who have felt his heavy hand and have
suffered terrible human losses as a result. I was a constable at the
time and was part of a patrol that came under heavy gunfire in the
section of West Kingston where he reigned. In those days, rifles and
submachine guns were just getting into the wrong hands and we did not
have bulletproof vests or such big guns. We did not see who was actually
firing at us, we got intelligence afterward that it was Massop and his
cronies. One of the cops in the patrol wet his pants."
But as time passed and Massop matured, he made moves to organise a peace
initiative between Tivoli Gardens and the hotbed of Matthews Lane,
which was then ruled by PNP enforcer, Aston 'Bucky Marshall' Thompson.
As leaders of their respective communities, both men organised meetings
and negotiated a peace which became official on January 9, 1978 when
Massop and Marshall met at the intersection of Oxford and Beeston
streets, the official line of demarcation between both communities, and
signed a peace treaty according to a report in the Daily Gleaner in
February 1979.
"Mr Massop, a JLP supporter, and Mr Aston 'Buckie' Thompson, a PNP
supporter, made history at Beeston and Oxford streets in West Kingston
on January 10, 1978 when they renounced political violence and called on
their supporters to "put away your guns and channel your energies into
building your communities," the Gleaner report stated.
After the signing of the peace treaty, street dances, which were often
the targets of vicious gun attacks, were held without incident in
sections of the volatile constituency.
Both enforcers were also responsible for organising the famous One Love
Peace Concert which featured Bob Marley and the Wailers and a host of
other reggae acts at the National Stadium in April 1978. It was Marley's
first performance in Jamaica since he embarked on a self-imposed exile
after narrowly escaping with his life following a gun attack at his Hope
Road base.
During the concert, Massop and Marshall were called up on stage by the late Jacob Miller in a symbolic peace gesture.
Marley also brought the house down when he invited Manley and Seaga on
stage in a historic move to call for peace between warring political
factions.
Eight months later, Massop's life would be snuffed out by policemen's bullets at the age of 31.
Massop, 21-year-old racehorse trainer Lloyd Fraser, also called 'Nolan'
of a Tivoli Gardens address, and Trevor 'Hindu' Tinson, a Jamaican who
lived in Canada, were killed by a large contingent of heavily armed
policemen on the evening of February 4, 1979, at the corner of
Industrial Terrace and Marcus Garvey Drive.
The men were returning from a football match in Spanish Town in a blue
and white Morris Oxford motorcar, bearing licence plates NE4800.
Police reported that they signalled the vehicle to stop and Massop disembarked from the vehicle and fired two shots at them.
The police said they returned the fire and Massop, Tinson and Fraser
were cut down while the other two men made good their escape.
A Police Information Centre report published in the Daily Gleaner
stated, "The man wearing the white hat jumped from the vehicle with gun
in hand and fired at the police. Several members of the party returned
the fire, hitting the man in the white straw hat and two other occupants
of the car. The fourth man escaped.
The police also alleged that after the shooting had stopped a .38 Smith
and Wesson revolver with two expended rounds and three live rounds were
taken from the man wearing the straw hat who was later identified as
Massop.
The police reported that the gun was stolen from a security guard at a
meat mart in downtown Kingston and that a search of the area turned up a
book containing the names of the entire staff of the Denham Town Police
Station.
Massop was shot 40 times, Tinson 20 times while Fraser received 10
gunshot wounds. Pictures of his lifeless body showed multiple gunshot
wounds, suggesting that Massop was shot while his hands were in the air.
But while the cops reported that they had killed the infamous Tivoli
Gardens enforcer and his cronies in a shoot-out, eyewitnesses and the
fourth occupant of the car, taxi driver, Samuel Evans, painted a
different picture and accused the cops of extra-judicial killings.
Days after the incident, Evans told the Gleaner that the car he was
driving was trailed from the causeway in St Catherine all the way to the
fateful intersection by three cops on motorcycles.
He said the cops signalled the vehicle to stop and he complied before
the cops ordered them to alight from the vehicle with their hands in the
air. The men also complied with the policemen's demand, Evans said at
the time.
The policemen, Evans said, then searched the men and the vehicle before an officer gave the order to 'kill'.
Evans said a hail of bullets then flew from the cops' guns and he
managed to escape by scampering across an open land at Marcus Garvey
Drive and diving into the sea.
Massop's wife, a fashion designer, also complained bitterly that her
husband was killed in cold blood and made a stink over the fact that
police had refused to allow an independent pathologist to be present
when an autopsy was being conducted on Massop's remains.
Almost a year after the fatal shootings of Massop, Tinson and Fraser, a
warrant was issued for the arrest of four policemen involved in
the incident.
The policemen, who were charged with three counts of murder, were
acquitted after a three-week trial in the St Thomas Circuit Court in
December 1982.
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