Jamaicans Find Crime Has Spread From Ghetto -- Island Leaders Take Bipartisan Stance

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Violent crime has crossed the street, from the ghettos into the suburbs, from downtown to uptown, and it has Jamaicans in a frenzy.

It also has presented Prime Minister P.J. Patterson with one of his most serious challenges since taking office little more than seven months ago.

As with most heads of government these days, Patterson's chief concern is a fragile economy.

But, Patterson acknowledged in a recent interview, "the main problem that I have had to address, certainly in the last few weeks, has been the level of crime and violence and the restoration of law and order."

Kingston, Jamaica's south coast capital, has long been regarded as one of the most violent cities in the world, and statistically the crime situation doesn't appear to have escalated that dramatically. Until recently, the perception had been that violence was largely confined to the Kingston ghettos. There, gangs born in the heat of political campaigns dating back to the 1950s have switched from politics to drugs and exchanged bottles and stones for guns and knives.

For many middle- and upper-class Jamaicans, as long as violent crime was confined to the ghettos, it was not only out of sight but out of mind.

`A BIGGER MEAL'

As Dennis Lalor, president of the Private Sector Organization of Jamaica (PSOJ), an influential umbrella group of business organizations, put it in a recent speech:

"For some time now, serious commentators have been telling us that the vultures of politics and lawlessness have been feasting on the corpse of the ghetto. Now these same vultures, with reinforcements, are looking for a bigger meal, and the wider society is in a state of panic as the lawlessness continues, seemingly out of hand."

Three incidents in October galvanized public opinion like nothing seen here since the ideological battles of the late 1970s. The difference now is that opinion is unified - do something about crime - unlike the 1970s, when society was politically polarized.

The incidents were the murder of a German tourist during a robbery; the shooting during a robbery of Evelyn Mafood, an elderly Jamaican known for her philanthropic and charitable works; and the particularly brutal murder of Vic Higgs, 59, a prominent British-born resident of Jamaica for nearly four decades, best known as the chairman of major golf tournaments.

Higgs had been returning to Kingston on Oct. 18 from the north coast when he ran into a roadblock, forcing him to seek an alternate route. Police theorize that Higgs became lost, stopped to ask directions and was attacked.

His car was stolen and his body found several days later in a bauxite company's mud lake.

THE RESPONSE

The Sunday Gleaner newspaper, in a front-page editorial, declared: "Jamaicans are gripped with fear as acts of violence have escalated in recent months. . . . The widespread nature of the crime puts us all at risk, on our roads, and in our homes."

Patterson responded two days later with a series of measures, including an expansion of joint police and Defense Force operations and the formation of a special task force to operate out of Kingston; Moneague, in the center of the island; and Montego Bay, on the north coast.

Earlier this month, Patterson and Edward Seaga, the opposition leader and former prime minister, met under heavy pressure from the island's business community to come up with a bipartisan approach to the problem. They announced their agreement on setting up a special task force to seek longer-term solutions.

POLICE OVERHAUL URGED

"The nation has to accept that this is a situation where we must work together to win a battle which we cannot afford to lose," Patterson said.

The crime wave has brought renewed calls for a drastic overhaul of the 6,500-member police force that is widely seen as inefficient and corrupt.

Among the measures to be considered by the bipartisan task force is a 12-point program put forth by Seaga and his opposition Jamaica Labor Party. The centerpiece of the JLP proposals is consolidation of the 4,000-member defense force and police into a single 10,000-member national-security force.

While some Jamaicans hailed the prospect, others expressed concern that the Defense Force - which now enjoys a far greater measure of public confidence than the police - might be contaminated by such a merger.