POOR RESIDENTS OF JAMAICA TURN INTO PRISONERS OF GANG WARS

KINGSTON, Jamaica - Inside the high walls of Admiral Town police station,
tired women and children, refugees of Kingston's latest gang wars, begged
for food from visitors and wondered when they could go home.

"I came here last night," said Tanisha Vassel, 20, balancing her year-old
son on her hip. "I'm afraid of gunmen out there, killing and burning and
looting."

Hundreds of people have fled escalating violence in poor neighborhoods of
Jamaica's capital in recent weeks, taking refuge with friends and relatives
and creating makeshift camps inside police stations.

About 500 people have been killed in Jamaica so far this year, including 71
in the past three weeks - prompting Prime Minister P.J. Patterson to
declare war on what he called "a spate of criminal madness."

On Monday, Patterson gave the military wide authority to crack down on
crime, saying soldiers would become a permanent fixture in the most
troubled inner-city neighborhoods of Kingston.

'They are there to find the guns, those who carry the guns and those who
control the guns," Patterson said, allowing the military to impose spot
checks, cordons, searches and curfews.

Last week, overnight curfews were imposed in the worst-hit areas, with
soldiers patrolling the streets in armored personnel carriers while
helicopters flew overhead.

The gang violence rampant in the poor neighborhoods of Kingston has not yet
affected tourism in Jamaica's tony beach resorts, located far from the
capital. But the Private Sector organization of Jamaica, a group of
business people, warned that the violence could hurt business, including
the island's vital import and export industries, and called on the
government to bring it under control.

Most of the shootings stem from unrelated disputes. In Admiral Town, for
example, fighting began after one man slapped the mother of the
neighborhood's "don," as gang leaders are known. Another gang feud, in the
Park Lane neighborhood, began with the theft of a video camera.

But the roots of Kingston's violent gang culture can be traced back decades
- - to the very political establishment now trying to stop it.

In the 1970s, the two main political parties - Edward Seaga's Jamaica Labor
Party and Patterson's People's National Party - helped organize and arm
residents, producing rival "garrison communities" where armed gangs
controlled the streets at the behest of local politicians and intimidated
voters at election time.

By the early 1980s, many gangs became involved in lucrative cocaine and
marijuana smuggling. With money of their own, they no longer needed the
patronage of politicians and began to operate independently.

In the past decade, many of Jamaica's most notorious gang leaders were
killed or sentenced to long prison terms, mainly in the United States, for
drug trafficking. Last week, Vivian Blake, alleged leader of one of the
United States' most notorious drug gangs, was extradited to Miami from
Kingston to face numerous charges. Blake allegedly ran the Shower Posse, a
Jamaican-dominated gang that prosecutors blame for 1,400 murders in several
U.S. states during the 1980s.

But the gangs still operate, fighting over turf and bolstered by a steady
flow of guns from the United States and new recruits of poor young men who
come from the countryside in search of work.

Government officials contend that Jamaican convicts deported from the
United States, Great Britain and Canada have aggravated the situation. Few
of the deportees have roots on the island, but they are responsible for a
disproportionate amount of crime, officials say.

Last year, a record 2,161 Jamaican criminals were sent back home - nearly
1,500 from the United States alone.

For the violence to end, residents must dissociate themselves from the
gangsters, Patterson said. "it is clear for all to see that the gunman who
is your so-called protector or don ... becomes your worst terrorist
tomorrow," he said.