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Emily Schmall

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AOL News KINGSTON, Jamaica (June 3) — Like the rest of Jamaica, the neighborhood of Tivoli Gardens is in a state of suspense as soldiers continue their manhunt for Christopher “Dudus” Coke. Four days of pitched battle last week left dozens dead and hundreds arrested, but Coke is still at large and his neighbors are claiming the security forces executed unarmed men.
Coke, the head of the notorious Shower Posse gang, is being sought for extradition to the United States on charges of drug and weapons trafficking. Police stormed his home turf in Tivoli Gardens in the western part of the Jamaican capital last week after Prime Minister Bruce Golding agreed to push for his capture, having tried for nine months to evade doing so.
The massive action by police and troops was met by a violent and sometimes creative local response. Men dressed as women took to the streets to set booby traps, hurl Molotov cocktails and block roads with burning cars, police officials said. Two police stations in the area were burned to the ground. Most of the some 700 people detained have since been released, according to the government press office.
A Neighborhood in TurmoilEmily Schmall for AOL News5 photos The pastel-colored buildings of Kingston’s Tivoli Gardens neighborhood were the backdrop for last week’s confrontation between government security forces and those defending neighborhood “president” Christopher “Dudus” Coke. Four days of battle left dozens dead and hundreds arrested, but Coke, the head of the notorious Shower Posse gang, is still at large. He is being sought for extradition to the United States on charges of drug and weapons trafficking.(Note: Please disable your pop-up blocker)http://xml.channel.aol.com/xmlpublisher/fetch.v2.xml?option=expand_relative_urls&dataUrlNodes=uiConfig,feedConfig,localizationConfig,entry&id=889500&pid=889499&uts=1275610910

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A Neighborhood in Turmoil

The pastel-colored buildings of Kingston’s Tivoli Gardens neighborhood were the backdrop for last week’s confrontation between government security forces and those defending neighborhood “president” Christopher “Dudus” Coke. Four days of battle left dozens dead and hundreds arrested, but Coke, the head of the notorious Shower Posse gang, is still at large. He is being sought for extradition to the United States on charges of drug and weapons trafficking.

Emily Schmall for AOL News

Emily Schmall for AOL News
Yet the residents of Tivoli Gardens remain unsure of the whereabouts of missing relatives and neighbors and largely nostalgic for Coke, to whom they refer as their “president.” Jamaican soldiers have set up barracks in the community center, enforcing a 6 p.m. curfew as they trawl for illegal weapons.
Tivoli Gardens is one of a dozen garrisons, or poor neighborhoods, run by alleged drug dons like Coke. In exchange for protection from the government, experts say, Coke delivered the area’s votes. The residents in turn received benefits like welfare and protection from Coke rather than from the government.
Many of last year’s 1,660 homicides in Kingston were attributed to gangs fighting for control of drug trafficking and extortion rackets. But Tivoli’s residents say last week’s violence was worse than anything they experienced under Coke.
Bullet Holes and Blood
During a recent afternoon, a group of women sat on lawn chairs outside a row of pastel-colored high-rises. Michelle Davis, 45, was in mourning for her 22-year-old son, Errol Spence, who she says was killed by police last week. Several neighbors said they witnessed the shooting and that Spence was unarmed. “They gave him two shots in his chest and one in his head,” said Catherine Quesd, 24. Davis said the police asked her to wrap him up in a sheet and then took the body with them.
As she pulled clean articles from a clothesline, Joann McCarthy, 63, described how her daughter’s ex-boyfriend, Dwayne Edwards, and her nephew, Andre Smith, were also killed in the engagement. “They shouldn’t have been mixed up in this,” she said. “They were both nice boys who never did anything to no one.”
McCarthy says that after soldiers evacuated the building, two police officers took Edwards and Smith back into their apartments. “They didn’t take them with brute force, so no one really had the thought that they would really kill them,” she says. McCarthy later went up to find Edwards lying in a pool of blood in the bathroom. “They killed my son in my own apartment and he didn’t deserve to die that way,” she said. “He wasn’t a gunman, he wasn’t a rude-behaving boy. He didn’t deserve to die that way.”
The two bodies were believed to be in a Kingston funeral home, where many of the bodies from the conflict in Tivoli have been taken, but when McCarthy called to inquire, she was told none of the bodies from Tivoli had been identified.
The postmortems on the Tivoli dead have been delayed until independent pathologists from overseas arrive, the Jamaican daily Observer newspaper reported Tuesday, citing a government official.
“At the present moment, there is no names for those bodies,” said Selena Watson, head of the funeral home’s customer relations, in a telephone interview Wednesday. Watson added the bodies are “being preserved” there.
‘There Was Some Good About Him’
When asked whether the allegations about Coke’s drug-dealing were true, Tivoli residents said they hadn’t known him very well, but that he was generous with children and the elderly and protected the community. “I do know that during his presence here as a president for this community, there has been peace. You could leave your door open. I have to testify about that fact. The place was just peaceful,” said Donovan Morgan, 19.
The residents described two annual events Coke hosted: Champion in Action in September, to raise money for school supplies, and Jamboree around Christmas, which financed a big meal for the elderly and presents for poor children.
Pat Marshall, 46, a Christian pastor who has lived in Tivoli since 1968, suggests Coke was a more effective political leader than Golding.
“One of the things that people really respect him for: Jamaica is a country that is politically divided. And here in Western Kingston, you have communities that support the [ruling] JLP [Jamaica Labor Party] like this one, and you have some that support the [opposition] PNP [People’s National Party]. What he did, he bring us together,” Marshall said. “We were enjoying the peace. People say he’s bad, but there was some good about him.”
Residents barely suppressed their horror when asked if Coke’s favors were doled out in exchange for political votes. “No, you didn’t have to do nothing at all! He was just a peaceful, honest, loving man,” said Nickeesha Jones, 29. “He was a nice man.”
Residents said they visited Coke at his office in Tivoli when they needed money for medication or to pay their children’s school fees. When the police busted in May 24, they found a piece of computer paper with the words “Jesus Loves Me” taped to the wall, a number of boxing trophies and a hardcover book called “The 33 Strategies of War.” No one was inside

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