JOEL ANDEM

Modern gangster behind bars
BY KARYL WALKER Sunday Observer staff reporter [email protected]
Sunday, December 09, 2007

SINCE the 1960s criminality has been a ‘thorn in the neck’ of law enforcement, and the criminal elements who ruled the respective decades took the level of brutality expected from a felon to lower depths.
One of the most dangerous and notorious gangsters of the modern era is Joel Andem, the reputed former leader of the Gideon Warriors Gang who grabbed the headlines and caused much anxiety and consternation among law-abiding citizens and law enforcers.
In fact, Andem is to date the only criminal to have been upgraded from fugitive to terrorist by the security forces. Past commissioner of police, Francis Forbes, described Andem as ‘operating like an urban-type guerilla’.
Rude boy Rhygin ruled the 1960s, and the chuckies of the following decades were even more fearsome, but even after the devastating election year of 1980, never before had Jamaica seen a wave of brutality and blood-letting since 1990 to the present. It shall be recorded in history as a dark period, where an average of more than 1,000 Jamaicans were murdered yearly and the inflow of illegal guns and ammunition reached unrivalled proportions.
Extortion evolved into the main profit earner of well-armed gangs across the country, who were wreaking havoc and making a mockery of the piecemeal efforts of the government and security forces at corralling crime and violence.
Andem, according to police blotters, was a career criminal. Days after he was dramatically captured by a joint military/police team in a rustic district of Clarksonville in St Ann, the police dusted off a long list of charges against the nation’s most wanted man including murders, shooting with intent, extortion, illegal possession of a firearm and kidnapping.
Andem occupied the head of the Police Most Wanted list for four years between 2001- 2005 after he was released for good behaviour after serving eight years on a shooting charge.
His fall into infamy began when he and a band of his Gideon Warriors were featured on television bearing high-powered rifles, slaughtering a cow and hosting treats in their lair at Land Lease, St Andrew.
Even though he was a feared criminal with numerous hideouts before, ever since the video was released by police to sections of the electronic media, Andem’s notoriety became almost international. He was by far the most feared and revered fugitive in the criminal underworld in the last 10 years.
The video was shot by one of Andem’s cronies and showed the reputed gang leader smiling coyly as his foot soldiers paid tribute. Across his lap was an AK47 assault rifle, one which top law enforcers say he was very adept at using. Footage captured at the hideout also showed Andem’s spouse brandishing a handgun and issuing verbal threats to a member of the constabulary.
The fugitive and his gang members have been blamed by police for a series of vicious murders, including that of Gas Station owner, Sylvia Edwards, who was kidnapped along Red Hills Road in July 2000. When a demand for ransom of $200,000 was not met, Edwards was murdered and buried in a shallow grave in Constitution Hill, St Andrew.
In January 2005, Andem was also freed of the murder of 30-year-old Lennox Ffrench, who was shot dead at his gate at Old Hope Road, St Andrew.
Andem and his gang have also been blamed for more than 22 murders, including those of Edwards’ brother-in-law Robert Edwards; District Constable James Thomas, who was shot dead in Kintyre and his body dumped in the Hope River; and People’s National Party (PNP) activist ,Pearl Brisco, who was branded a police informer.
James was shot near his home at Papine in St Andrew.
Police blotters also show that the gangster was suspected to be among a group of men who challenged a contingent of police officers to a shoot-out in Mud Town in April 2002. During that incident, a 21-year-old police constable, with barely a year’s experience under his belt, narrowly escaped with his life after a powerful bullet struck and disabled an M-16 rifle he was using to defend himself, before ricocheting and tearing a sizeable portion off his bullet-proof helmet.
Two years later, police reported that another cop was shot in the leg after a blazing gun-battle with members of the Gideon Warriors in Kyntire, Papine. Andem and his gang were at the time blamed for shooting five police officers between 2001 and 2004.
In December 2001, three policemen were injured during a reported shoot-out with members of the gang in Skyline, St Andrew. A gang member, known as ‘Eddie’, was killed in that confrontation.
Andem’s reign of terror ended in May 2005 after a large battalion of police and soldiers crawled upon an opulent residence the most wanted fugitive had built for himself, in the pre-dawn hours and collared him. Andem was reportedly so comfortable in his deep rural hideout that he reportedly expressed surprise that he had been found.
Assistant Commissioner, Donald Pusey, who led the operation to nab Joel Andem, said the feared gangster was ruthless when he was finally captured.
“He trembled like a badly tuned truck,” Pusey told the Sunday Observer in an interview at the time.
Andem was then taken to a nearby school before he was whisked away by helicopter and taken from the Jamaica Defence Force Air Wing in a convoy of vehicles to be locked away and face the slew of charges he was slapped with.
Andem is now locked up in the Horizon Adult Remand and Correctional Centre, at Bumper Hall in St Andrew. He was slapped with a 20-year sentence in November 2005 for illegal possession of a firearm and shooting with intent after four cops testified that he opened fire at them along Skyline Drive in St Andrew in January 2002.
Andem was first convicted in June 1983 for breaking and larceny.
He grew up in the East Kingston area and lost two of his brothers to gun violence. One was killed by bandits while the other was killed during a confrontation with the police.
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