Jamaica Fights to Break Grip of Violent Past
By DAMIEN CAVE
KINGSTON, Jamaica — Gunshots every night, burned-down businesses and
corpses — up to a half-dozen a day — used to define the neighborhood of
Mountain View on the eastern hillsides of Kingston, Jamaica’s capital.
But not anymore.
Now, the nights are filled with barefoot soccer matches under
streetlights or block parties that bring together former rivals from
local gangs. No one has been murdered in Mountain View for three years.
“The dark cloud is moving away,” said Keith Nugent, 76, a tailor in the
neighborhood who counsels former criminals. “Young people here are
beginning to gravitate to a sense of life, and function.”
Jamaica is emerging as a rare bright spot in the hub of the fight
against drugs and organized crime that extends across South America and
the Caribbean. After more than a decade fighting lawlessness, with
limited success, this small island with a reputation for both carefree
living and bloodshed has begun to see results. Jamaica’s murder rate,
while still high, has fallen by 40 percent since 2009, and a respected study recently reported that “Jamaica has fallen from one of the more corrupt countries in the Americas to one of the least.”
The situation here differs markedly from elsewhere in the region, in
Central America and Mexico, where militarized, transnational drug
cartels battle among themselves over the main smuggling routes into the
United States. But experts and American officials say that as drug
traffic shifts back to the Caribbean — because of intensifying
enforcement elsewhere — Jamaica has done far more than many other
countries to protect itself, by working transparently to strengthen weak
institutions while welcoming assistance from outsiders.
“There’s an awful lot of introspection that’s been going on in Jamaica,”
said Pamela E. Bridgewater, the American ambassador. As a result, she
added, cooperation with the United States and other countries has “risen
to a different level.”
Since 2009, no other country has received more American aid from the $203 million Caribbean Basin Security Initiative,
yet relatively little of it has been directed toward the muscular,
militarized efforts financed elsewhere as part of the war on drugs.
The new emphasis — on community policing, violence reduction and
combating corruption — grew partly from crisis. In May 2010, Christopher
M. Coke, one of Jamaica’s most powerful drug lords, fought an attempt
to arrest and extradite him to the United States, prompting a neighborhood siege by the authorities, which left at least 70 people dead.
His surrender a few weeks later helped break up gun and drug networks,
according to Jamaican officials, and allowed the country to zero in on
longer-term projects, with imported expertise.
The United States, for example, is about to set up a vetting center for
the Anticorruption Bureau of the Jamaican police, complete with
polygraphs and training for operators.
A recent report by the Government Accountability Office also notes that
the Americans are giving Jamaican officers utility belts with only a
baton and pepper spray in an effort to discourage deadly armed
conflicts. The next weapons most likely to be delivered — Tasers — are
more aggressive, but still a far cry from the helicopters, boats and
Special Forces troops the United States is pushing into Central America.
Jamaica, though, has a different historical relationship with the United States and the war on drugs.
The Caribbean was the main trafficking route for cocaine heading to the
United States in the ’80s and ’90s, which means Jamaica was among the
first countries in the region to join international efforts against
transnational crime. Jamaican and American officials say that as a
result, sensitivities about foreign intervention are less intense here
than in Central America and Mexico, and there are fewer institutional
rivalries or disagreements about when the police or the military should
intervene in the fight against traffickers.
“As long as we are aligned in the fight against organized crime, I’m
willing to work with anyone,” said Peter Bunting, Jamaica’s minister of
security.
Jamaica, as a longtime hub of marijuana production and consumption, has
generally been more open about its weaknesses. Officials acknowledged
the need for new levels of help nearly a decade ago, even putting
foreigners in charge of the national police.
“Jamaica was on a precipice; it was about to become a narco state,” said
Mark Shields, a former British police officer appointed deputy police
commissioner in 2005.
The government also created or strengthened anticorruption commissions
to keep a close watch on elected officials, contracts and the police.
Forensic audits became required annually, for senior officials and beat
officers alike. And laws have been toughened so that those found with
suspicious windfalls must prove how they obtained the money or else be
fired or prosecuted.
The goal, Mr. Bunting said, is to focus less on drugs and more on
ill-gotten gains. “The kingpins are not the ones on the go-fast boat,”
he said. “They’re usually closer to their money, so we’re going after
the money.”
Eduardo A. Gamarra, a professor of international relations at Florida
International University, said Jamaica’s approach had taken hold only
because the arrest of Mr. Coke forced residents to see their country at
rock bottom. A tipping point was reached, he said, as Jamaicans
witnessed the power of Mr. Coke (nicknamed Dudus), who avoided
extradition for nearly a year with the help of well-connected political
allies, and as bodies piled up from the conflict between his supporters
and the authorities.
“You have to have these momentous events to transform societies,” Mr.
Gamarra said. “What is it that produced the change in Jamaica? Dudus
Coke.”
The positive results have been obvious in areas like Mountain View. For
many residents there, the Coke affair — which took place a few miles
away in the Tivoli Gardens neighborhood — still stings like lingering
tear gas. Local gangs with ties to Mr. Coke resent what they describe as
a police “incursion” characterized by officers killing civilians and
other examples of excessive force.
But even the angriest Mountain View residents say they have chosen calm
over chaos. Oswaldo Kemp, 34, who spent two years in prison in
connection with the shooting of a police officer, now worries mostly
about work. “I’m just trying to get my little farm running again,” he
said, standing between a fattened pig and a row of vegetables.
Around the corner, Kachif Benjamin, 27, shirtless and wearing a pink
backpack, said many gang members and drug dealers also decided they had
had enough of the bloodshed. “We’ve been there, done that,” he said.
Violence remains a significant problem. On July 22 in Montego Bay, a
teenager was stabbed to death by an angry mob in what appeared to be an
antigay attack, and Jamaica’s murder rate is still 40 per 100,000,
compared with 22 per 100,000 in Mexico and 87 per 100,000 in Honduras.
Bruce M. Bagley, a professor of international studies at the University
of Miami, said it is still not clear if the improvements here and in
other parts of the Caribbean are enough to withstand the increase in
drug trafficking that experts are predicting. “The underlying
socio-economic problems, the institutional problems and the rerouting of
drugs back through the Caribbean are a very powerful combination,” he
said.
But for Mr. Nugent, the tailor, and for many other residents, peace
carries its own momentum. Gaunt and goateed, standing near a faded
sticker on the wall of his home reading, “Celebrate forgiveness,” he
said he sees hope in all the people asking him to mend clothes for work,
and in the young men who seek guidance or help paying for school.
Praising the police for spending more time getting to know the community
and for starting youth clubs for teenagers, he said the future looked
more bright than dark.
“Light attracts light,” he said. “Everything good must have a beginning.” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/world/americas/jamaica-fights-to-break-grip-of-violent-past.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
