Battles intensify between Jamaica police and gangsters allied with reputed drug kingpin

Gunbattles intensifying, spreading in Jamaica

KINGSTON, Jamaica — Jamaica’s security forces clashed with masked gunmen allied with an alleged drug kingpin for a second day Monday as an intensifying multi-front battle against gangs spread to volatile slums outside the capital.

Police and soldiers came under heavy fire in the West Kingston stronghold of Christopher “Dudus” Coke, who is trying to avoid extradition to the U.S. on drug and arms trafficking charges. Military helicopters with mounted guns buzzed above the impoverished area between plumes of black smoke.

West Kingston, which includes the Trenchtown slum where reggae superstar Bob Marley was raised, is the epicenter of the violence. But on Monday, security forces were also under attack in areas outside that patchwork of gritty slums in the capital on Jamaica’s southeastern coast, far from the virtually crime-free tourist resorts on the north shore.

Gunmen shot at police while trying to erect barricades in a poor section of St. Catherine parish, which is just outside the two parishes where the government on Sunday implemented a monthlong state of emergency.

A police station in an outlying area of Kingston parish also was showered with bullets by a roving band of gunmen with high-powered rifles.

Security Minister Dwight Nelson said “police are on top of the situation,” but gunfire was reported in several poor communities and brazen gunmen shot up Kingston’s central police station. Loud explosions rang across West Kingston on Monday afternoon as police assaulted Coke’s slum stronghold of Tivoli Gardens.

The Jamaica Constabulary Force said two officers have been killed and six injured during firefights with criminal gangs whose arsenals rival police firepower.

“The loss of these two officers and the injury to the six, while difficult to deal with, will only serve as a rallying call for the police to remain strong, committed and firm as we continue to encounter brazen criminals,” said Police Commissioner Owen Ellington.

Ellington said “scores of criminals” from gangs across the Caribbean island had joined the fighting in the Kingston area, where the fear of gun violence has driven many to live behind gated walls with key-pad entry systems and 24-hour security.

In a sun-splashed island known more for reggae music and all-inclusive resorts, the violence erupted Sunday afternoon after nearly a week of rising tensions over the possible extradition of Coke to the United States, where he faces a possible sentence of life in prison.

Coke is described as one of the world’s most dangerous drug lords by the U.S. Justice Department.

Coke leads one of the gangs that control politicized slums known as “garrisons.” Political parties created the gangs in the 1970s to rustle up votes. The gangs have since turned to drug trafficking, but each remains closely tied to a political party. Coke’s gang is tied to the governing Labor Party.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding had stalled Coke’s extradition request for nine months with claims the U.S. indictment relied on illegal wiretap evidence. After Golding reversed himself last Monday amid growing public discontent, Coke’s supporters began barricading streets and preparing for battle.

On Friday, the U.S. State Department warned in a travel alert that access roads to the airport could be blocked by civil unrest, but Jamaica’s Civil Aviation Authority said Monday that flights were arriving and departing on schedule at Kingston’s Norman Manley International Airport.

The U.S. State Department said Monday it was “the responsibility of the Jamaican government to locate and arrest Mr. Coke.” A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman denied widespread rumors that U.S. officials were meeting with Coke’s lawyers.

Coke’s lead attorney, Don Foote, refused to disclose to The Associated Press whether Coke was hunkered down in the barricaded Tivoli Gardens slum or was somewhere else in the Caribbean country.

In a national address Sunday night, Golding said the state of emergency order for Kingston and St. Andrew parish gives authorities the power to restrict movement. Security forces will also be able to conduct searches and detain people without warrants.

The U.S. extradition controversy and the ensuing violence has brought to the fore issues that have been simmering for a long time in Jamaica, specifically the links between the political parties and volatile slums that are virtually one-party garrisons.

Amid the escalating tension, the country’s civil society has been demanding through talk shows, blogs and Facebook groups that the government sever all links with powerful “community dons” like Coke.

“If Coke is somehow able to hold out and formally establish his community as a state within a state, then Jamaica’s future is bleak,” said Brian Meeks, a professor of government at Jamaica’s Mona campus of the University of the West Indies.