Osmund James, Contributor
1979. RANKING JIM, product of a west Kingston ghetto, and one of the top political activists in his ghetto, was killed in a midday "shoot out" with a group of rival activists along Slipe Pen Road in Kingston.
Ranking Jim's 11-year-old son, Joe, cried and swore to avenge his father's death by killing as many as possible from the ghetto where he knew his father's murderers hailed from - he didn't know who exactly had been involved in the killing, but was sure which ghetto they were from; and perhaps he also didn't know his father had murdered two from another rival ghetto.
Joe's uncle, younger brother of the late Ranking Jim, and several friends also swore to avenge Ranking Jim's violent death. And by the time Joe turned 15 and began "fighting politics" as a gunman-activist, his father's murder had already been paid for with several funerals. But Joe was still determined to do his part too.
Revenge
Several months after his 15th birthday, Joe and three of his rude boy cronies cornered two youths who were from the ghetto that had produced Ranking Jim's murderers. This "cornering" took place near where Ranking Jim had been killed on Slipe Pen Road. Joe and his friends had guns drawn, while their preys cowered against a dirty tenement-yard fence pleading for life, the evening and the narrow garbage-littered lane seemingly stink with death.
"Today I avenge me father," Joe snarled.
And at this point one of the pleading preys began clawing at the gun in his own waist. Joe saw the desperate move. Joe's gun spat just ahead of the barks of his friends' guns. The two cornered youths died there. Joe felt himself floating on power.
After taking the one gun present on the dead bodies, Joe and his friends hurried off towards their home turf - they were on neutral ghetto turf (that's to say a ghetto that was often like a killing ground for rival political gangs from adjoining "garrisons/strongholds", none of the rival gangs able to control the neutral turf due to any mix of two or more reasons, such as a nearby major road favourable to cops, too many residents who were more interested in education/church/Rasta-vibes/black-unity/music than in politics, most of the households headed by women, girls outnumbering young men two to one).
Joe and his friends strode briskly towards their garrison/stronghold home-turf where cops did not venture except by daylight and always in large numbers. Joe was bouncingly elated over the act of murder they'd just committed. But just about 200 metres from the safety of their stronghold home-turf they ran into a small jeep of five uniformed cops. The cops shouted for Joe and his friends to stop. Of course, Joe and his friends flew over the nearest fence, a low hedge, Joe being the only one who also pulled his gun and fired while in flight.
One cop was hit. The cops did not return fire because they saw a group of about seven children in the yard through which the rude boys fled.
The cop who Joe shot died in hospital that night, a death that sparked two chillingly important facts - one, Joe earned the name Ranking Joe; secondly, the best friend and the son of the dead cop, both of them also cops, swore to avenge the murder of their friend/father by killing as many males as possible from Ranking Joe's area. These two revenge-minded cops, 42- year-old Corporal Peters, best friend of the murdered cop, and 21- year-old Constable Brown, son of the same murdered cop, knew the murderer(s) were from Ranking Joe's ghetto, but didn't know who specifically.
Three weeks later Constable Brown killed one of Ranking Joe's friends. It was an unnecessary killing, a murder, for the victim was cornered with hands in the air and "relieved" of his gun before Constable Brown riddled him with bullets, although the other two cops present wanted to arrest the victim. This "lawful murder", which happened in a vacant burnt-out house, happened because Constable Brown knew where he was from.
"Him a gunman from the area that produce my father's murderer or murderers," Constable Brown said.
Double revenge
Two girls witnessed this "lawful murder" and sent word to the victim's cronies. Of course, Ranking Joe and his friends swore to kill Constable Brown, and two years later Ranking Joe did manage to kill Constable Brown. But by then Constable Brown and Corporal Peters had killed two more of Ranking Joe's cronies as further vengeance for the murder of Constable Brown's father. Corporal Peters - soon-to-be Sergeant - now swore to avenge the murder of Constable Brown.
The mid-1980s was in full swing when Ranking Joe killed Constable Brown. Drug smuggling-to-and-selling-in-the-US was fast replacing politics and robbery as the major source of earnings for gunmen like Ranking Joe, and also sucking in greedy cops like Sergeant Peters.
Ranking Joe and Sergeant Peters were both murdered in 1990. Joe was killed by both the younger brother of Joe's first murder victim and the son of a man Joe's father had murdered over woman-plus-politics. Sergeant Peters was stealthily murdered by another cop over a drug deal gone sour.
Joe's friends knew who killed him so, of course, they swore to get revenge by killing Joe's two murderers and any friend/relative of the same murderers.
But Sergeant Peters cop friends and his two drug-smuggling sons wrongfully blamed Joe's friends for Sergeant Peters's death. And so the murders of Ranking Joe and Sergeant Peters in 1990 gave a new twist to the cycle of revenge killings that could be said to have began with the murder of Joe's murderous father in 1979. This cycle of murders flowed bloodily along through the 1990s, in United States and Jamaican streets and buildings, entwined with drugs-money and Jamaican politics, blasted into the year of 2000 as if it'd go on forever, a never ending cycle of funerals.
