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Editorial | Is Israeli intelligence the difference?

Published:Tuesday | November 13, 2018 | 12:00 AM

The evidence suggests that the intelligence-gathering capacity of Jamaica's security forces may be improving. At last, they seem, recently, to know where notorious criminals are likely to turn up, with, unfortunately, deadly consequences for the gangsters.

For instance, last Thursday, two men, Christopher Armstrong and Dwayne Hall, who the constabulary claimed to have been among the capital's most notorious gang leaders, and headed groups that competed in extorting scrap-metal dealers, were shot dead by police in separate operations. Armstrong, whose sobriquet was 'Shabba', led a gang that went by that name. Hall's gang was called Blingers, while the man himself was sometime called 'Killy-Killy', apparently because of his notoriety for homicides.

Both were wanted for, or suspected of, several murders. According to the police, Hall, having confronted the lawmen, was shot dead during a firefight in the Callaloo Mews area of Riverton City. That was around noon. Six hours later, the police happened to be conducting an operation in Bayshore Park, Harbour View, at the other end of the city, in the east, when they came across Armstrong, who fired at them. He was killed in the shootout.

Based on the police's attribution to killings by these men, those operations would mean the clearing up of at least 10 murders - six by Hall and four by Armstrong - as well as several other crimes, including, in the case of Armstrong, the shooting of a policeman.

Then, on Monday, in Richmond Hill, St James, the parish that has been at the epicentre of the most recent crime wave, to the point of causing the Government to declare a state of public emergency there in February, soldiers shot dead Richard Anderson, the alleged second-in-command of the infamous Ratty gang. The gang's assumed current boss, Delano Wilmot, apparently much feared in the communities where he operates, escaped during the gun battle. Happily, though, the military reported retrieving an assault rifle and ammunition from the dead criminal.

We sense from these operations, and other recent ones, a new confidence by police and soldiers in the conduct of their operations. Their exercises seem more precise and targeted.

Indeed, some people suggest a correlation between this improved operational precision, real or perceived, and the reported intelligence partnership between Jamaica and Israel, whose parameters have not been clarified by the Government, but is known to have been the cause of unease, if not tension, between Kingston and traditional Western partners, including Britain, Canada and the United States, with which Jamaica has information-gathering and -sharing arrangements.

 

Securing Jamaica

 

In a nod to the existence of an arrangement with Israel, but without offering details on the pact, Prime Minister Andrew Holness told Parliament in September: "One of the leading nations in the world in cybersecurity is Israel. So I want to be absolutely clear that we are cooperating with any country around the world to build our capacity in all kinds of areas which, when put together, forms part of the plan to secure Jamaica."

If, indeed, Israeli assistance has helped to improve the intelligence-gathering capacity of Jamaica's security forces, that is a good thing, although we would hope for different outcomes in the execution of operations. We appreciate the extreme violence of some of Jamaica's criminals, and their willingness to confront law enforcement. Nonetheless, we would prefer that these engagements have non-lethal outcomes and that criminals face justice in courts of law.

In the meantime, while the Government may not be able to give all the details of a security agreement with Israel, we believe that it owes the public more than it has so far offered and an assurance that Jamaica's security forces won't be expected to operate like the Israeli Defence Force in facing down Hamas militants.