THERE IS a long history, going back to the earliest colonial times, of trading contraband goods between Jamaica and Central and South America and the island of Hispaniola through the south coast of Jamaica. The distances involved are at most a few hundred miles across hard-to-police open seas.
In more recent times, the cocaine trade out of Colombia has been using the south coast as a trans-shipment point. Now the police in St. Elizabeth have added credence to rumours that a guns-for-ganja trade is taking place between that parish and other southern parishes and Haiti. The shooting deaths of three members of one family in Clarendon recently have also been linked by the police to gunrunning with Haiti.
The flow of guns into the country is a matter of the gravest concern in the fight against crime. It is clear that the criminal elements have no great difficulty in obtaining arms and ammunition and in paying for supplies. The ports are contaminated with shipments of illegal firearms. Just after the leader of Spanish Town's 'Clansman' gang, Donovan 'Bulbie' Bennett was slain by the police, a major shipment of arms and ammunition destined for the gang was intercepted based on information gathered from the dead leader's documents. Given the widespread availability of illegal guns in the society, we can safely assume many other shipments of guns have gone undetected.
The trade along the long highly indented coastline, far more difficult to intercept, must be adding substantially to the influx of weapons and ammunition. The JDF Coastguard and the Marine Police are not equipped to effectively deal with the flow of contraband through the coastline. It is not likely that the flow can ever be fully shut down, but much more needs to be done on the high seas and on land to cut the inflow and deployment of illegal guns. The matter is a major national security issue. When sleepy little villages like Slipe, Vineyard and Parottee come under the investigative spotlight of the police for gun trading, a strong signal is being sent that the trade-in-arms will have no cover in obscurity.
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