Claude Mills and Rasbert Turner, Gleaner Reporters
Keith Noel, Principal of St. Jago High School, one of the participants at yesterday's Gleaner Editors' Forum at the Phillippo Baptist Church Hall. - Rudolph Brown/Staff Photographer
THE WELL-ORGANISED 'dons' of Spanish Town, St. Catherine, have instituted an 'alternative government' which they use to control a thriving multimillion-dollar extortion racket in the town which targets businessmen, market vendors, and taxi operators in the bustling town centre.
But even with several legitimate companies on the edge of collapse, many business owners and managers remain tight-lipped about the extortionists' activities, apparently afraid of retaliation by armed thugs.
"What is happening in Spanish Town, it's not about turf; it's all about money collected from extortion from taximen or whatever...hundreds of thousands of dollars," Keith Noel, principal of the St. Jago High School, said during a Gleaner Editors' Forum at the Phillippo Baptist Church Hall in Spanish Town, yesterday.
"They have organised the taxi system in Spanish Town; they have saved a gas station by saying only people going to a particular area can park in that gas station. They organised it, and they are paid for that. That is a system of government."
The Gleaner Forum, attended by several stakeholders in the community, was organised to examine the problems in the Old Capital and discuss possible solutions. Outside the Kingston Metropolitan Area, Spanish Town is the largest town with a population of 131,515.
According to anecdotal reports coming out of the forum, the tentacles of the rival, well-organised gangs have burrowed into all layers of civil society. Businesses a number of which are small 'mom and pop' operations are running scared, gainfully employed residents are members of the gangs, taximen and vendors are powerless, civilian witnesses have clammed up, and the police are impotent.
Extortion proceeds, according to Gleaner sources, are used to bankroll the acquisition of high-powered weapons and motor vehicles that help to tighten the dons' grip on the town, and cement the 'new government within a government' structure.
Dr. Raymoth Notice, Mayor of Spanish Town, mentioned the efforts of the St. Catherine Parish Council to transform the town, and spoke to the inner machinations of the Spanish Town criminal underworld.
"What has happened in the whole scenario is that other representations have developed that have now put the politics on the backburner," he said.
"So now, we're here trying to catch up with these persons who are so advanced, so hi-tech, who have gone to prison and learned so much that we cannot outsmart them right now. It is a matter of belling the cat."
Spanish Town businessman Ronald Bourne gave a disturbing account of his run-ins with brazen community dons. "We took a group of kids to clean up a gully on St. John's Road and we were run away by the dons, the people who had a vested interest in that area," Mr. Bourne said. "We tried to paint the pedestrian crossing out at the police station, and the dons came out and asked "What is in it for us? Wha yu doing it for? Who is paying you?'"
Cortis Nolan, principal of Jonathan Grant High School, admits that since the recent escalation of violence, "The children in the schools are more 'hyped up' to carry on wrong things. I notice that when anything happens out there, they come in with the excitement, and they try to play out what is happening... and they want to challenge the teachers."
Claudette Richardson-Pious, executive director of Children First which is based in the town, admitted that gangs have been actively recruiting members of her student population. "There are young people in my centre ... have been recruited," Mrs. Richardson-Pious said.
