Inside the mind of a criminal - Baptised ex-gangster talks about toxic power of blood and guns

David stood impatiently at the baptismal pool, his feet already in the water, as the pastor beckoned to another to come forward.

He kept rubbing his hands together as he looked around nervously. The church was packed to capacity, every window and door occupied, but his friends were not there. They were all dead, killed one after the other over an eight-month period, including his younger brother.

“It was a tough experience, but it was the sign that I needed,” the 27-year-old told The Gleaner. “My mother cry almost every night since the Feds (police) shoot him. She will give me dinner, but she still not talking about it ... . Sometimes me wonder if she blame me because she kept warning me about my friends,” the former gangster, who, along with his now-deceased cronies, wreaked havoc in western Jamaica for more than a decade. “It mess me up because is me bring him into it.”

“One part of you is saying run for your life, but there was always a stronger force, a dark feeling that just make you angry,” he said.

For many in David’s community, becoming a Christian was unthinkable as his involvement in criminality was an open secret that no one living on his block would dare to speak of.

“MoBay is not like the inner-city turfs in Kingston, where a don controls the entire community. Here in the west, every street or block have its own general, so if one genna have a disagreement with another genna, that leads to a serious conflict, even if you mother live over the other side. It is you against them,” he explained. “Everything that happen on our turf go through the big man – as simple as that ... . Every vote goes to whoever the genna says it must go to, so the politician depends on him to maintain order and control.”

The former gangster, who has requested that his surname not be published by The Gleaner because he fears recrimination by his one-time peers, said that baptism might have been a desperate attempt to telegraph that he was a changed man.

David was 11 years old when his father’s body was found slumped over the steering wheel of the car he operated as a ‘robot’ taxi. His dad was in south Trelawny on a break from the seasonal overseas farm-work programme. After the funeral, the ex-gangster’s mother decided that they would move to the community where she had been raised in St James. Rent was cheap, he said, and the family illegally abstracted electricity like so many did.

The former gunman said that the tragedy unfolded just as he started high school. He considers his first two years at high school a disaster.

“It was everything my father worked so hard to keep us away from. He constantly warned me, my brother, and little sister about the negative influences, but now we had it right there in the tenement yard that we lived,” he said.

“... My mother was hardly home, always on the hustle, and it was about survival because school gang warfare is the feeder for the bigger game. As long as you are from certain communities, you were automatically on the battlefield ... ,” he said.

Soon, his mother was making regular trips to the principal’s office.

David recalls being on suspension from school after a fight, causing his mother to be too embarrassed to seek intervention at the school. But word got to the ‘big man’ – a don – and two days into the suspension, he was summoned. “All he said was, ‘Make sure you in school tomorrow or you will have to leave this place ... . Not even a dunce criminal can make it far’,” David told The Gleaner.

“I went to school the next day. I don’t know how the suspension was lifted, but no one stopped me,” he said with a smile. “I would later learn that all it takes is a phone call, but I graduated with eight subjects, including three A levels, so the garrison is not a bad place ... .”

David had to give a wrong address to get his first job at a call-centre firm. His salary allowed him to support his younger brother and sister with schooling. The company also offered to pay part of his tuition to pursue his dream of becoming a software developer, but things took a different turn when a gangster from another block threatened to rape his 12-year-old sister.

“He was killed at the gas station at (street name redacted). I did not do it, but it felt good ... . I did what my dad would have done to protect us. She was never interfered with again,” was all he said.

David declined to speak in detail about criminal networks in his community and would not discuss his climb up the ranks. He, however, admitted that he had been part of, or had witnessed, acts that bothered his conscience for years.

“After the first killing, I stayed home for days, but as time went by, making a hit (a killing) became a tonic ... . Even if I did not pull the trigger, just being there made me feel something different ... . It was as if someone else was inside me. I did not care.”

While he was involved in a life of crime, David still worked a nine-to-five job. But when he was off the clock, that’s when the real work began – making his loot in the streets. He was involved in the lottery scam – call racket mainly targeting elderly Americans – also making money providing protection for the crooks.

“My friends were the same ones from high school. We always knew that there were smarter ways to operate so that we do not draw the attention of the police. We knew each other ... we trusted each other.

“So we were always well attired – no underpants on display, no socks and slippers, and that stuff, and there was nothing for us to flaunt – and as a result, we were never profiled by the police for years.”

According to David, political influence on criminality was real but began to wane as the wealth of scammers created a shift, but a member of parliament ensured that those arrested by the police had legal representation.

“All of us knew who to call to defend us. Our lawyer is politically connected. Our job was to hold down the turf and ensure that everyone votes for him,” he told The Gleaner. “The four times I was arrested, I called him or his office manager.”

But David said that holding his baby girl in his arms for the first time was the signal to abandon a life of crime.

By then, the Anti-Lotto Scam Task Force “was in our faces”, he said. And one of his friends was killed in a shooting after the criminals had let down their guard.

To this day, David rues unwittingly sending this brother to his death. His crew was advised about an obeah woman in Bethel Town, Westmoreland, whose sorcery could protect them from death or being caught by the police. That ‘protection’ would cost $100,000.

But the day when they planned to see her, he got a call that his girlfriend was giving birth, so he skipped that visit.

“Foolishly, I sent my little brother because by then, he was rolling with us as our driver ... . I was trying to keep him out of the main activities, but he was an excellent driver and a computer whiz.”

“But for some reason, I kept putting things off, and then all of the crew started dropping out between March and November 2018, every one of the crew, including my brother, who was either killed by police or opposing gangsters ... .

“Losing my friends was hard, but my brother’s death was a thunderbolt,” he said. “I killed him, and I was angry.”

He is not sure that going to the cops would help, now that he is a Christian, as he believes that there are policemen and politicians in western Jamaica who need to be brought to justice for their crimes.

“Talking to you is my confession. I will do better using my experience to steer other youngsters from a path of crime,” he said.

“I am genuinely sorry for the pain I have caused.”

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