Lloyd Williams, Senior Associate EditorIn 2000 all of 536 people in Jam-aica were murdered by the gun, the police say. In addition, there were 1,012 reports of shootings.
With this situation, the Gun and Drug Interdiction Agreement signed by the United States and the Jamaican Governments in November 2000 is good news. It will see Jamaica receiving further assistance from the U.S. through its Customs Service and its Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, to try to stem the flow of illegal guns into the island through intercepts at U.S. ports of entry and the training of Jamaican police and Customs personnel.
Also, Prime Minister P.J. Patterson said, the Government will be getting equipment from the United Kingdom to aid in the search for guns and ammunition.
And the Jamaica Constabulary is now training explosive-detection dogs to be used to help find illegal guns and ammunition hidden by criminals.
But curbing Jamaica's gun problems will not be an easy task, given the uninterrupted supply of illegal firearms which criminal elements in the island always seem to be able to put their hands on.
Mention "guns" in Jamaica, and it evokes timeless grief to far too many families.
The families of nameless inner-city and middle class people murdered in cold blood in their streets, in their yards, in their homes, in their rooms by gunmen/terrorists, seemingly with impunity.
The family of Kenneth HoSue, 51, shot dead by robbers on the night of May 15, 2000 when he slowed his Volkswagen pick-up to a crawl at Llanrumney, St. Mary, to cope with the awfully bad road leading to a Bailey Bridge.
The family of pregnant Janice "Camille" McCalla, 31, shot dead with her two-year-old son, Wayne Martin, on January 13, 2001 on Ninth Street, Trench Town, Kingston, leaving her six children motherless.
The family of Ted O'Gilvie, gunned down on the afternoon of June 16, 1977, as he went home for lunch in Roehampton, St. Andrew, by the beneficiaries of scarce benefits and spoils whose corruption in the McGregor Gully public works project he had unearthed, exposing their filthy feeding trough.
The family of Dr. Ken Whitbourne, 57, optometrist, shot dead just before 5:00 p.m., on May 13, 1993 in his office, Central Avenue, Kingston 10, by two men posing as patients.
His family, like those of the 16,024 people murdered in Jamaica since 1970, still waits for justice to be done. (In the same period an additional 33,772 shooting cases were reported to the police).
And as if that were not enough, patients have been murdered in the Kingston Public and Spanish Town hospitals and even a paraplegic in the Mona Rehabilitation Centre (now the Sir John Golding Rehabilitation Centre).
The families of scores of policemen (250 between 1970 and June 26, 1987) murdered in cold blood (211 by the gun) in the last several years.
The families of hundreds of people murdered in this country in the last 33 years in the name of JLP, PNP and WPJ politics.
In the eight months leading up to the October 30 General Election of 1980 politicians in this country, many of whom are still active in day-to-day politics, armed several communities in Jamaica and in this way bought into, had a hand in, and were responsible for the deaths of many poor, innocent people.
The guns of choice in those days were the M16 and AK47 assault rifles, M1 Enforce carbines and the Bushmasters.
Remind them of this and many of these politicians will resort to the usual cheap psychology: "If you say this then you must have information that you should give to the police."
There were many of them in the 1970s and 1980s who spoke about "defending their communities against terrorist elements". First their constituents would spout a lot of propaganda about the arsenal of the other side, to justify their acquisition of guns to "defend themselves" against their opponents. What did they use to "defend" their communities, mopsticks?
Any seasoned, professional member of the security forces will tell you that whenever it is election time in Jamaica, there are always many more guns on the streets than are in the hands of ordinary criminals, and this can't be by accident because these guns are not used to rob people. They are used to terrorise whole communities, neighbourhoods and rival factions, or to "defend" the owners' communities. So where do all these people get guns from to use to protect, defend and maintain the interests of the politicians?
"The politicians have a lot to answer for," a retired police officer who has been through many an election, said in an interview. "The politicians cannot stand back like Pontius Pilate and wash their hands and say they know nothing about guns. If they don't know, they certainly know that some of their constituencies could not have been won or held without firearms being used to intimidate voters or to make sure that voters on the other side didn't vote".
And don't forget the multiple gun finds in terrorists' camps at Fellowship Hall, St. Mary; and Rock Spring, St. Andrew. The politicians involved know it is true and they know who they are. Despite their self-righteous denials, they know they have blood on their hands, and much to answer for.
Illegal guns
Where do all these illegal guns come from?
According to intelligence and police sources, they are smuggled in on the docks and at the airports in barrels and boxes with rice, flour, corn flakes and other grocery items; in motor vehicles, in components of motor vehicles, in radios, in television sets; in machinery, in suitcases with personal effects; in higglers' bags, in containers.
Besides, cocaine and ganja dealers bring them in by boats beached in dark, isolated coves, or by light planes landing at clandestine airstrips. The guns are smuggled in as gifts to friends or relatives, to maintain or wrest political power, to keep or seize gang and drug turf, to arm organised crime gangs and individual criminals and for profit-making.
A few years ago, a higgler coming in from Miami was held at the Norman Manley International Airport, Kingston, with three handguns. Some 400 cartridges for them came in on a flight a day or two later. The story then was that her boyfriend, a sergeant of police, was to have met her, as usual, in the airport customs hall, and "cleared her through", as usual, without her luggage being searched. But something went wrong with his work schedule that day; he did not show up, and the customs officer who was examining her luggage was professional. So, she was duly arrested and placed before the court. Not everybody is corrupt.
Then there is the case of an unaccompanied suitcase which arrived at the same airport from the U.S. a while back. The owner went to clear it but he said he had no key for it. The customs officer handling it decided to force the lock open to see what was in it. The owner persuaded him to hold off so he could go fetch the key. Instead, he jumped on his cellular and contacted an off-duty customs officer who sped to the airport, took over the handling of the suitcase and actually handed it over to the owner unopened and unsearched through a side door.
(This writer's information then was that the suitcase had in U.S. greenbacks and not guns, the consignee having been a big "drug man" in the States but who scrupulously eschewed such activities here).
Later that day the same customs officer in uniform was seen at the businessplace of the suitcase owner.
There have been several cases in the last few years of uninspected 40-foot containers being driven away from the docks in Kingston without being searched.
On October 25, 1996 heavily armed gunmen seized a 40-foot container purporting to contain "vegetable oil", from a bonded warehouse at Newport West. Were there guns in it?
Mike Surridge, Commissioner of the Revenue Protection Department, Ministry of Finance, recalls the case in 2000 of 48 containers coming into the island, manifested as "french fries".
"When we got the last four they were chicken. But in truth, we have no idea what was in the other 44 containers," Mr. Surridge says.
Also, he cited the case last week of the container manifested as "appliances", which manifest the importers tried to change to "building materials" but in which were in fact motor vehicles a Mercedes Benz sedan, a Mitsubishi Pajero SUV, and three motorcycles.
"Now, had we not got the assistance of the trusted company in that, the container would have left the docks and nobody would have known where it is, where it went or what was in it. Now that is the danger," Mr. Surridge said.
There are other sources by which illegal guns come into the island - tourists bring them in their luggage which is not searched. But this is not thought to happen so frequently as to be alarming. Over the last few years, tourists have been found with guns in their luggage when it is searched on their way out of the island. They usually explain that they had taken the firearms here for their own protection. More often than not, they are jailed for the offence.
But there is a much more serious source of illegal guns deportees.
"Gun smuggling," says an ex-military officer who keeps abreast of these things, "has become much more sophisticated recently, especially with the return of an average of 1,000 deportees a year for the last several years. mainly from the U.S., Canada and the UK." He points out that a great many of the deportees were convicted abroad of serious crimes ranging from armed robbery to gun murders and drug trafficking.
"They have been used to their firearms in the United States, bearing in mind that firearms can be acquired quite easily there. Plus, they have their contacts up there from whom they can acquire guns, so they will find a way to get their guns to them here.
"And because of the whole system of containers and barrels coming into Jamaica, all they have to do is piggyback onto whatever smuggling system is in use. Thousands of barrels come into the island daily, especially during the Christmas season. So if a man dismantles his handguns and put the parts in bags with foodstuff or detergent, he will usually get them. The large firearms they usually try to smuggle in motor vehicles and machinery. Usually they use false identities and false addresses, and with the complicity of corrupt people in the system, whether at the warehouses or airports and seaports, they will get their guns."
But he points out that even with the best will in the world, not every parcel that is in every barrel can be examined physically at the various ports of entry.
Ethnic populations
And he says that in recent times, with U.S. law enforcement agencies, especially in places like New York, playing special attention to Jamaican posses, many of those gang members have been shifting their gun-running activities to England, acquiring their guns in Europe with its open borders. A reason for choosing England is the large ethnic populations in some cities within which they can disappear and live quite comfortably.
Another way firearms have come in, he says, is through fishing boats from Honduras, Nicaragua and other parts of Central America, that operate in the Pedro Banks, firearms having been easy to acquire in those countries because of upheavals in the region in recent years.
Sometimes the guns and or ammunition are smuggled in with lobsters, fishing equipment, with the fish or in fish products. Usually, the weapons are off-loaded at night and at places where there is no surveillance by the security forces.
Among guns seized by the police in the last few years have been such battlefield weapons as M-16 and Kalashnikov (AK47) assault rifles, some of the latter brand new. On May 30, 1998 the police seized three semi-automatic pistols and 961 cartridges aboard an airplane which had flown into the Norman Manley International Airport, Kingston, from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.
Seized by the police in other operations islandwide have been Uzi submachine guns, Tec-9s, Mac-10s, Mac-11s, and a whole variety of 9mm semi-automatic pistols, including Glocks, Heckler & Koch, Desert Eagles, Berettas, Rugers, Taurus, Walthers, Brownings, Colt Pythons and Cobras, Llamas and Smith & Wessons and many makes of Magnum revolvers; Winchester and Remington shotguns, assorted rifles and in short, just about any gun you can find in a catalogue.
Turning up with equal regularity have been ammunition for these guns. Such as 13,000 .38 calibre and 9mm rounds found at a warehouse in Kingston on October 30, 1998. Such as 900 rounds found in a barrel by members of the Contraband Enforcement Team on November 11, 1998 in a barrel with parcels of soap powder, sugar, rice and flour at a warehouse on Industrial Terrace, Kingston.
