NO REMEDY FOR 'POSSE'

International drug cartel calling the shots in Toronto's northwest end

When the dust settled af ter Tuesday's predawn raid of 105 Ontario
homes, police made a dramatic announcement: An international cartel
called the Jamaican Shower Posse had been pulling the strings in
Toronto's northwest end, supplying drugs and guns to smaller gangs
and fueling violence in the area.

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair heralded the raids as a significant
strike at the Shower Posse's operations, but gang experts and sources
in the Caribbean say such claims should be taken with a grain of salt.

The gang's alleged leader, Christopher "Dudus" Coke, is likely the
most powerful man in Jamaica, "perhaps more powerful than the
government and the prime minister," former Jamaican national security
minister Dr. Peter Phillips told the National Post yesterday.

Even confronting the organization on home soil would be a monumental
and perhaps impossible task, according to Michael Chettleburgh, a
Toronto crime consultant who counts former Posse members among his staff.

The comments highlight just how monumental a task is set before
Toronto police as they attempt to head off a powerful criminal
network in order to staunch the flow of drugs and guns into Toronto
neighbourhoods.

Mr. Chettleburgh, who literally wrote the book on Canadian gangs --
Young Thugs: Inside the Dangerous World of Canadian Street Gangs --
likened the raids to "snipping the heads off a few dandelions" when
the weed is appearing "everywhere on Toronto lawns."

Toronto police said this week they are working closely with Jamaican
authorities to confront the Shower Posse, but sources say those same
authorities, including the police and the ruling Jamaica Labour
Party, are either too under-re-sourced or too corrupt to confront the
organization.

During his tenure as minister of national security from 2001-2007,
Dr. Phillips set up a task force that succeeded in rolling back the
influence of drug traffickers in Jamaica, but today the Shower Posse
and its leader are above the law, Dr. Phillips said.

"They do whatever they want," agreed a Jamaican crime reporter who
has gone undercover in Coke's stronghold of West Kingston, which also
happens to be the home constituency of prime minister Bruce Golding.
"Mr. Coke pretty much has his own army comprising of persons who are
more than willing to die for him."

As "don" of the garrison, Mr. Coke administers an ad hoc court where
offenders are "tried and sentenced," the reporter said.

Also known as "President," Mr. Coke is currently at the centre of a
diplomatic imbroglio between the U.S. and Jamaica, which has been
fighting a request for Mr. Coke's extradition on drug and gun
charges. Lobbyists that some allege were hired by the Jamaica Labour
Party pled Mr. Coke's case directly with top aides to President
Obama, which Dr. Phillips said gives an idea of the man's influence.

But barriers to confronting the gang's Jamaican contingent are only a
small part of the problem, said Mr. Chettleburgh.

"Don't let the name mislead you. This is not a gang that is based out
of Jamaica. The Jamaican Shower Posse is everywhere. There is no head
office for this gang," he said, echoing Blair, who said the Shower
Posse "live among us, and they have lived among us for some period of time."

Police revealed Tuesday that the Toronto cell of the Jamaican Shower
Posse was linked to drug-runners in Panama, Dominican Republic and
the United States, but did not say how or to what extent the Toronto
group was connected to its namesake country.

The Shower Posse was originally formed to support the campaign of
former Jamaican prime minister Edward Seaga during the national
elections of 1980.

It has since spread to over 20 U.S. cities, Ontario and London,
England, where the group took the name President's Click.

Today in Jamaica, the phrase still refers to supporters of the
Jamaica Labour Party. "As they're passing through the community, they
would shout 'Shower!'" said Dr. Phillips, calling the word "a piece
of Jamaican vernacular with an underbelly of violence."

The Shower Posse takes its name from its modus operandi -- showering
communities with bullets to enforce its dominance, said Mr.
Chettleburgh. The Posse has a strong presence in northwest Toronto
because members fled to Canada when Michael Manley's government took
power in Jamaica in the 1970s.

Police say the Jamaican gang controls a "significant part" of the
city's drug trade through two local gangs, the Falstaff Crips and
Five Point Generals, and that its influence stretches as far north as
Sault Ste. Marie, sweeping from Windsor in the west to Ottawa in the
east. Earlier this year, Project Corral investigators in the
Dominican Republic intercepted more than 70 kilograms of cocaine and
a load of firearms destined for Toronto, police say.

Ten of the Toronto suspects apprehended this week were reportedly
members of the Shower Posse.

The Shower Posse has roots in Brooklyn, N.Y., where Vivian Blake
founded the gang in the 1970s. Before his incarceration in a U.S.
prison in 2000 for racketeering and cocaine possession, the native
Jamaican was allegedly responsible for importing thousands of tons of
drugs into the United States.

He served eight years of his 28-year sentence and returned to Jamaica
in January 2009. He died on March 25 in Kingston at the age of 54.

Antoinette Jackson-Aziz, a high-ranking member of the Philadelphia
cell of the Jamaican Shower Posse during the 1980s and '90s, said
police and media are often overzealous in their efforts to name and
trace the connections of street gangs.

"The [U. S.] media kind of built up this whole Shower Posse thing,"
she said in a phone interview from Philadelphia, adding that the
drugs she sold came from Mexico, her partners were in other U.S.
states from New Jersey to California, and only some of her proceeds
wound up in Jamaica. "It was more hype that put the Shower Posse label to it."

She does remember, however, that drug prices in Philadelphia spike
during Jamaican elections, when kingpins like Mr. Coke used the money
to fund political campaigns.

"You could get triple money for a pound of weed," Ms. Jackson-Aziz recalled.