No peace talks with gangsters

Deputy Commissioner Fitz Bailey has shot down a state minister’s suggestion for the Police High Command to negotiate with gangsters amid a 6.3 per cent increase in murders.

Bailey, who heads the crime portfolio in the Jamaica Constabulary Force, has the backing of National Security Minister Dr Horace Chang, who also poured cold water on the proposal, declaring that the Government would not sit with criminals.

However, State Minister Homer Davis’ compromise talks have found favour with Justice Minister Delroy Chuck and deputy chairman of the Peace Management Initiative (PMI), Horace Levy, who both suggested that gangsters be given space to discuss deep-seated grievances among themselves to quell rifts.

“We can’t appease criminals. We don’t do that. Criminals must be brought before the court and given their time to present their side of the story and justice must triumph over every criminal activity,” Bailey said in a Gleaner interview on Thursday following a tour of the Criminal Records Office in Kingston with Chang.

“Divisional commanders have their own strategies that they use in terms of community engagement, but I am not of the view that as an organisation, we should, in a calculated way, meet with persons as a group who we know are engaged in criminal activities,” the deputy commissioner added.

That admission indicated a more complex understanding of police policy – hardline denunciation of compromise but a realpolitik that winks at cops on the ground who seek to pacify conflicts.

Lamenting the wave of violence in St James, which has recorded a 33 per cent increase in murders up to June 6, Davis said at the weekend that he has agonised over the state of crime in the parish, where he and Chang are members of parliament.

The Observer reported Davis as saying that it was time for the police to summon the gangsters, enquire about their grouses, and work towards a solution.

But the security minister was firm in his dismissal of his colleague’s suggestion in an interview with journalists.

“I don’t negotiate with criminals. I cannot negotiate with killers,” Chang, who is running the Government in the absence of Prime Minister Andrew Holness, declared Thursday.

“Killers, we look for evidence, apprehend them, and lock them up,” he said, noting, however, that Davis had a right to his opinion.

That caveat appeared to reduce the relevance of Davis’ remark, hinting that it would not have the backing of the Cabinet.

On Thursday, Chuck told The Gleaner that while he was not “fully” in support of Davis’ view, a mechanism must be found to facilitate peace talks between rival gangsters.

“To the extent that there is the Ministers’ Fraternal, the political directorate, the police, the community, if the gangsters could get the opportunity to sit and work out their differences, then there could be a significant reduction in the conflicts and bloodshed,” he noted.

Chuck said that he used a similar strategy in the once crime-plagued Grants Pen community in his St Andrew North Eastern constituency, which he represents in the House of Representatives.

“As you can see, for the past 20 or more years, Grants Pen has been a fairly peaceful community,” he said.

Meanwhile, Levy, who was integral in the signing of a 2008 peace treaty in August Town, St Andrew, said he was not sold on the police negotiating with criminals but noted that a space must be created for pragmatic negotiations.

But he cautioned that this would only work for second-tier criminals affiliated with gangs.

“It’s better than the present situation that they have and the present effort,” Levy said of Davis’ suggestion.

He said, on the one hand, there are serious criminals who hire contract killers, trade drugs internationally, and extort on a large scale who cannot be reined in exception through prosecution.

Conversely, he said that there are others who do not have criminal intentions but engage in warfare because of an endemic culture of violence.

“Those are the ones who can be brought together and sat down with an intermediary body like the PMI or church group,” said Levy.

“The police don’t have that social function. You can’t lug the two groups together into one basket and treat them the same way.”

kimone.francis@gleanerjm.com