SPOT ON

Dudus gets his due
Jun 13th 2012, 20:07 by M.W.

NUMBER 23, which is accompanied by a picture of a black man on the poster for Jamaica’s Cash Pot betting game, was the contest’s winning pick on June 9th. Small gamblers in Tivoli Gardens, a poor district in Kingston, the capital, cleaned up on bets as small as fifty cents. But that number was not so lucky for Christopher “Dudus” Coke, Tivoli’s former “don”, or gang leader. The day before, he received a 23-year prison sentence in a New York court.

Mr Coke was Jamaica’s most prominent mobster. At his sentencing hearing, which began last month, Jermaine “Cowboy” Cohen, a former associate of Mr Coke’s, shed new light on his organisation’s operations. “Dudus” took over the Shower Posse gang from his father, Lester “Jim Brown” Coke, who burned to death in a jail cell almost 20 years ago. Under his leadership, the gang was mainly known as “Presidential Click”, and its best-known source of revenue was drug trafficking. But according to Mr Cohen, it also dabbled in visa fraud (using a high-school athletics team) and extortion (charging small traders in the nearby Coronation Market for “protection money”).

The gang also benefited from close political ties. Tivoli Gardens forms part of the Kingston Western parliamentary district. The seat was held for years by Edward Seaga, the long-time leader of the right-of-centre Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). He was succeeded by Bruce Golding, Jamaica’s prime minister until last October. That helped Mr Coke diversify into legitimate businesses: his construction company won numerous government contracts and gave out jobs to Tivoli’s residents.

Within Tivoli Gardens, the gang operated a virtual para-state. It ran a harsh vigilante justice system. According to Mr Cohen, petty thieves could be punished with a bullet in the hand or foot, and those judged guilty in a domestic quarrel risked a beating. A man accused of stealing from Mr Coke was allegedly tied down and killed with a chainsaw.

Facing intense pressure from the United States, the Jamaican government sent security forces to recapture Tivoli Gardens from the gang in May 2010. More than 70 people were killed—some of them in what witnesses allege were extra-judicial killings by the police and army. Amnesty International called last month for an independent commission of enquiry into the assault, and Jamaica’s public defender, a government watchdog, has received 1,000 complaints. The attack failed to snare Mr Coke. But with no safe hiding place, he was forced to turn himself in a month later, and was extradited to the United States. Last August he pled guilty to charges of drug trafficking and assault.

There is little question that Jamaica is safer without Mr Coke. Although the country’s murder rate remains one of the world’s highest, it fell sharply after the Tivoli gun battle, and remains more than a third below its previous level. And the government made a powerful show of authority by re-establishing control over the country’s most notorious gang-dominated “garrison”, or district, and proving that the country’s mobsters are not untouchable.

Nonetheless, the decapitation of Mr Coke’s organisation represents a small, if significant, victory in a very long battle. The island remains awash in guns: Mr Cohen testified that the mobs received regular shipments of AK-47s and M-16s from New York. They were distributed (under close supervision from gang lieutenants) to hundreds of young recruits or “shotters”, some of whom were only 14 years old. Among Mr Cohen’s most explosive (and unproven) allegations is that some of these gunmen were deployed in JLP election campaigns. Mr Coke’s younger brother, Leighton “Livity” Coke, was held for two years on gun charges, but was just freed last month because of shaky identification evidence. (He was detained again on June 12th for questioning about murders in west Kingston).

Moreover, the urban poverty and discontent that feed the gangs remain as entrenched as ever. And violence still runs deep in Jamaican popular culture. A leading musician, Vybz Kartel, currently faces a murder charge. Tivoli residents, who vowed to “die for Dudus” when the government invaded the district, still revere “Prezi”, as Mr Coke was also known. He ran “treats” or street parties, handed out school supplies and groceries and raised money for residents’ medical care. “I’m a good person, and I have done a lot of good deeds for persons in my community”, he said while pleading for leniency at his sentencing hearing, and wrote in one letter home, “To God be the glory for all that he was doing through me”. Until the Jamaican state can begin offering these services as effectively as the gangs do, any mobsters it manages to arrest or kill will be swiftly and effectively replaced.

Source :http://www.economist.com/blogs/americasview/2012/06/organised-crime-jamaica