The community of Kraal is most noted for the May 7, 2003 incident that saw four persons being fatally shot and killed by the Reneto Adams-led now-defunct Crime Management Unit (CMU).
For residents, it is a stigma they do not think they will be able to shake, making it seem impossible to get the amenities they need to make life better for their young people as well as adults living in the community.
Washington’s travel ban and other sanctions, issued last week against Reneto Adams and five other members of the CMU, resurrected bitter memories for the residents of the rural district. The cops were acquitted in a high-profile case in December 2005.
His heart heaving with fear, Rohan Thomas has vivid recollections of bolting through bushes at lightning speed, each stride faster and longer as if chased by a ghost. It was his own ghost that he was fleeing to escape.
A survivor of the quadruple killing in Kraal, north-central Clarendon, Thomas is still wracked by the trauma linked to the bloodletting that unfolded on May 7, 2003, a flashpoint that regained international prominence last Thursday when the Trump administration slapped six current and former Jamaican policemen with travel and other sanctions.
Washington’s ban against Reneto Adams, Devon Orlando Bernard, Patrick Anthony Coke, Shayne St Aubyn Lyons, Leford Gordon, and Roderick Anthony Collier resurrected bitter memories for the residents of the rural district. They still claim that the Crime Management Unit, the feared police squad led by Adams, killed the Kraal quartet in cold blood even though they were acquitted in a high-profile case in December 2005.
Khadane Rowe, who witnessed the condition his uncle Rohan ‘Bulby’ Thomas was in as he ran for his life in Kraal, Clarendon, on that fateful day of May 7, 2003, says it is a memory that will never be erased.
Reacting to the news that the United States had imposed travel and other sanctions on six former members of the disbanded Crime Management Unit (CMU) of the Jamaica Constabulary Force as well as members of their immediate families because of the Kraal incident, Rowe said it brought little consolation.
The six – retired Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams, who led the unit; Devon Orlando Bernard; Patrick Anthony Coke; Shayne St Aubyn Lyons; Leford Gordon; and Roderick Anthony Collier – were named in a US State Department report as being sanctioned for committing “gross violations in human rights in Jamaica”.