BACK WITH A VENGEANCE: Extortionists hit transport operators hard

 

Police say they have put measures in place to clamp down on the once-rampant and deadly, multi-million extortion racket in commercial spaces across the island.

But a probe by Loop News has revealed that despite these measures, the scheme is re-emerging and threatening to escalate to new heights.

Criminals are now using newer and more sophisticated methods to carry out their illegal acts, which is said to have cost transport operators in the Kingston Metropolitan Transport Region $3 million a day.

And what’s more, extortion victims are being forced to pay more than before as the splitting up of volatile gangs means that now multiple criminal leaders are demanding fees.

"In the past one would find a single don or one informal leader operating in a space with this in mind, victims would find themselves the target of that person but now with the splitting of gangs all around we are seeing more than one don operating in the same area," a senior official in the transport sector told Loop News.

Members of the transport industry — private taxi and bus operators who themselves have fallen victims to the scheme — have also come out to speak.

"The criminals warn that those who attempt to oppose them ago dead. A that them threaten we and a say," one victim said.

Edgerton Newman — president of the Transport Operators Development Sustainable Services — told Loop News: "The extortion racket is back and it’s worse than before, to the point where transport operators just in Kingston Metropolitan Transport Region alone are losing close to $3 million per day to criminals involved in this scheme."

Everton Styles, vice president of the Jamaica Association of Transport Owners and Operators (JATOO), has also confirmed the reports.

"The extortion scheme is back and it’s worse than before,” Styles said.

On operator, who asked not to be named, said: "On Spanish Road the situation get so bad that Jamaica Urban Transit Company sub-franchise operators had to stop collecting fares from passengers on buses."

He explained that operators had to instead collaborate with the police to set up special points along the busy thoroughfare where buses would stop and passengers would pay their fares to authorities.

These claims have been confirmed by Radcliffe Lewis, former head of the police traffic department and now head of the JUTC's Franchise Protection arm.