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'We were under fire' A SENIOR policeman involved in the July 7 operation in West Kingston yesterday testified that he shot, and possibly killed, a civilian who was within 75 yards of him, with a Barrett M-82 50-calibre semi-automatic rifle. Sergeant Warren Turner of the Mobile Reserve told a hushed hearing of the West Kingston Commission of Enquiry that Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Reneto Adams instructed him to take charge of the weapon, which he said is capable of penetrating concrete walls, after gunmen unleashed a methodical and sustained attack on the security forces with high-powered weapons. "We were under heavy gunfire and we needed something superior to quell the situation," he explained. At the beginning of the cordon and search operation he had been equipped with an M-16 rifle, but SSP Adams pointed out a man in Tivoli Gardens who was firing with what looked like an H&K-91 rifle. In a riveting account of his perspective on that morning's events, the trained firearms instructor said that while he was in the police command post near Coronation Market, he shot one round from the Barrett M-82 at a man on the third floor of a four-storey apartment complex in Tivoli Gardens. This was after the man aimed a rocket-launcher at members of the security forces in the command post, he said. "I saw him pitch back, so I assumed he was hit," he told the Commission, demonstrating how the injured man fell backwards on being shot. He said a group of women appeared soon after and dragged the man's body away. He said two gunmen were also sticking the muzzles of what appeared to be AK-47 rifles through holes in a wall near the high-rise and firing, while a group of about seven gunmen firing from the building at one point had four policemen literally pinned with their backs to a wall in a cul-de-sac opposite Coronation Market. The officers were eventually saved by quick action by officers in the Jamaica Defence Force's (JDF) armoured personnel carrier the V-150. Sergeant Turner however told the Commission that on a visit to the area after July 7 he realised that the wall the officers had been trapped against had apparently been demolished since the incident. He testified that before entering the two-storey police command post he saw a large group of women and children form a human shield across the road near Coronation Market. Gunmen fired on the security forces from behind the human shield by sticking their rifles between individuals, and were moving back and forth across the road in groups. The security forces could not fire back at the gunmen because of the risk of harming the women and children, he said. He told the Enquiry that during the attack of the gunmen at least two earth-shaking explosions occurred one while he was on Spanish Town Road, and later another while he was at the Coronation Market command post. Both explosions plunged the atmosphere into darkness with billows of thick, black smoke and dust, he said. The Sergeant also recounted seeing Opposition Leader Edward Seaga and his bodyguard, along with Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) Councillor for the Tivoli Gardens division, Desmond McKenzie, and JLP Chairman Ryan Peralto drive to the area shortly before SSP Adams left his position at the intersection of Spanish Town Road and Darling Street to enter the command post. "I saw Mr. Seaga raise his hand to the crowd," Sergeant Turner said, adding that the gunfire in the immediate area had ceased just before Mr. Seaga arrived on the scene. He said Opposition Leader then spoke to SSP Adams for a short while but he did not hear the conversation himself. He said Mr. Seaga and his entourage then drove away, immediately after which the security forces again came under attack. He told the Commission that on Monday July 9 while he was driving the Mobile Reserve's armoured vehicle to assist in the removal of dead bodies from the streets, gunmen also attacked those attempting to do so.
ASSISTANT COMMISSONER of Police (ACP) in charge of Area 4, Arthur Martin, on Tuesday denied that police cordons mounted during the July 7 cordon and search operation either "singly or cumulatively" cordoned off Tivoli Gardens and Denham Town.
Under cross-examination by attorney Abe Dabdoub, the Assistant Commissioner testified that the area cordoned during the operation was a section of Denham Town bounded to the west by Last Street, to the east by Milk Lane, to the south by Spanish Town Road, and to the north by Dumfries Street and not the entire two communities.
He said he ordered three police check-points to be set up one at Industrial Terrace, another along Spanish Town Road, and a third at the Coronation Market command post. He told the Commission he ordered no check-points around Tivoli Gardens and did not know if one was set up at Tivoli Court.
Mr. Dabdoub, however, told the Commission he would later lead witnesses giving evidence that residents of Tivoli Gardens were unable to enter or leave the community because of police blockades at some entrances.
ACP Martin on Monday told the Commission that he planned the cordon and search operation in Denham Town to be executed first among a total of 19 areas, based on intelligence available to him and what he felt was an "immediacy" to act on that intelligence to recover illegal guns and apprehend wanted men.
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