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Well known to police in Jamaica, ‘Cassie' takes cover in Mississauga
TIMOTHY APPLEBY
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
April 21, 2007 at 2:24 AM EST
MISSISSAUGA, ONT — Perched on busy Goreway Drive, the bland Malton public-housing complex that is home to one of the leaders in Jamaica's bloody political wars might not be in line for any design awards.
But Cleveland Downer's modest fifth-floor apartment is probably a lot safer than his last place of residence in the Red Hills Road district of Kingston, Jamaica's capital. There, on Nov. 19, he survived an attempt on his life that left an AK-47 bullet lodged near his spine.
Badly wounded though he was, Mr. Downer, 39 — known as Cassie — has fared much better than at least 23 other people who have been shot dead on or since that date, in what Jamaican police believe is a bloody feud within the street gang called The Commons.
Thought to be about 100 strong, the gang derives its name from a teeming, impoverished neighbourhood deemed so dangerous that taxi drivers would not take a Canadian visitor there, even by day.
Shot in the neck and upper body, Cleveland 'Cassie' Downer fled the mean streets of Kingston, Jamaica and arrived in Canada a few weeks later - one in a series series of back-and-forth trips in recent years. (Fernando Morales/Globe and Mail)
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It is home to Mr. Downer, who is also a landed immigrant in Canada. With no criminal record in this country, he was able, through marriage to his wife, Yvetta, a Canadian resident, to settle in the Toronto area about four years ago.
Shot in the neck and upper body as he and friends prepared to leave his house for a Jamaica Labour Party convention, he arrived in Canada a few weeks later, one in a series of back-and-forth trips in recent years, immigration records show.
In Jamaica, where he once operated a car wash, Mr. Downer is no stranger to police.
In 2002, he and three other men were charged in the deaths of seven people, including two children, who were killed when a 25-strong posse of gunmen set fire to several Red Hills Road houses and started shooting as the occupants fled. After several years of delays, he was acquitted late last summer when the case against him collapsed.
Before that, also in Kingston, he accumulated minor criminal convictions for trespassing, marijuana possession and assault. And as Jamaican authorities probe the intra-gang killings since November, which they believe primarily stem from quarrels over the allocation of government money used for gully-cleaning work, they say they would like to talk to Mr. Downer.
Britain's courts, too, know of Mr. Downer. In July, 2004, its Court of Appeal cited his name several times in approving a Jamaican citizen's bid for political asylum, stating that “there is a real question whether the state of Jamaica provides sufficiency of protection for an informer or supposed informer. . . .”
The unnamed asylum seeker contended that, as a suspected agent for the People's National Party, the JLP's archrival, he had been badly beaten up by a group of JLP activists and later witnessed the rape of his girlfriend and his sister by JLP members, allegedly because the women had taken the man to hospital.
Mr. Downer led the four-member group that roughed up the man, the court found. And complicating any police investigation was the fact that Mr. Downer's mother had a relationship with a police sergeant, described in the British ruling as “a source of information, which he telephones to Cleveland Downer, who sometimes gives money to the police.”
As for the ultimately abortive murder case against him — adjourned at one stage because the presiding judge failed to show up — “the lack of progress in Mr. Downer's trial is entirely consistent with the appellant's expert evidence,” the appeal court concluded.
Mr. Downer is well known in Kingston for his political connections, who include JLP General Secretary and local MP Karl Samuda, after whom a street is named in Red Hills Road. And with an election certain this year and a strong chance the JLP will end 18 straight years of rule by the scandal-dogged PNP, there is speculation he may return to lend a hand.
“Cassie is old guard, he'll be back for the election because Karl Samuda will need him and he's still in charge,” predicted Assistant Police Commissioner Les Green, who supervises the Jamaica Constabulary Force's organized-crime portfolio.
“But if he does come back he'll be vulnerable — that's why so many people have been killed. ... We'd like to talk to him about all that.”
Interviewed briefly by telephone, Mr. Downer said he was not, in fact, planning to return Jamaica for the election, but he offered no other information. It was unclear whether he is still receiving medical help in the Ontario hospital system or has been able to work.
After scheduling a meeting with a reporter, he failed to show up, and subsequent efforts to speak to him again were unsuccessful.
“He's not around,” said his wife, Yvetta, deflecting further questions and referring inquiries to Mr. Samuda in Kingston, who did not respond to a message left with his secretary seeking comment.
The politician and Mr. Downer nonetheless appear to be well acquainted.
Last month, Mr. Samuda accused police of bias and incompetence in probing the string of killings in Kingston since last November, claiming they were wrong to focus on Mr. Downer.
Not true, Mr. Green responded. He and other officers would like to talk to Mr. Downer about 23 mostly unsolved homicides and 13 woundings that they believe are all connected. Five of those killings took place on the day Mr. Downer was shot.
Nor would that be the first time Mr. Samuda has provided Mr. Downer with assistance. Back in 2002, when police announced that they wanted to interview him in connection with the seven homicides that became dubbed the 100 Lane Massacre, it was Mr. Samuda who brought him in.
“He insisted that I take him in because he has a perfectly valid alibi,” Mr. Samuda explained at the time.
Two years before that, Mr. Downer was charged with illegal possession of a gun and ammunition and with shooting at police, in connection with an incident that left two of his friends dead. Those charges, too, either were dropped or ended in an acquittal.
Whatever troubles Mr. Downer may have encountered in Jamaica, in Canada he has a clean slate.
Under Section 36 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, admissibility for would-be immigrants convicted of crimes committed abroad depends on the seriousness of the crimes.
The broad rule is that applicants are barred from entry if convicted of an offence whose Criminal Code equivalent carries a maximum penalty of at least 10 years imprisonment. However, miscreants guilty of lesser crimes often have a tough time too, said Toronto immigration lawyer Sergio Karas.
“We sometimes have difficulties with [authorities] over very minor types of offences, which they seem to take seriously ... sometimes good, hard-working people who years ago made a small slip are prevented from coming to Canada or are given the royal runaround.”
Mr. Downer's years-old criminal record, however, appears to have posed few problems.
In 1989, he was convicted of trespassing on the property of the Jamaica Telephone Company and fined 1,000 Jamaican dollars — about $20 under current exchange rates — or three months imprisonment.
In 1997, he received the same penalty for a conviction of assault.
And in 1999, a conviction for possessing marijuana yielded a penalty that was smaller still: a fine of $100 (Jamaican) or 10 days in jail.
If Mr. Downer does return to Jamaica for the coming election, likely to be held in the summer, he will join a democratic process that is always lively and often deadly.
Jamaica's homicide rate remains one of the highest in the world — last year the island's 2.7 million people experienced 1,340 killings, a 20-per-cent drop from the record set in 2005. Election years usually see spikes in violence.
In January, Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas warned of an ominous buildup of weapons in politically divided districts within Jamaica's major urban centres.
Detective Sergeant Barrington Huntley of the homicide squad concurred. “We're really worried about what will happen when the election is called,” he said.
Normally, the firearms used in crime are evenly divided between handguns and long guns. “But when the real war is on,” he said, “it's all rifles.”
Well known to police in Jamaica, ‘Cassie' takes cover in Mississauga
TIMOTHY APPLEBY
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
April 21, 2007 at 2:24 AM EST
MISSISSAUGA, ONT — Perched on busy Goreway Drive, the bland Malton public-housing complex that is home to one of the leaders in Jamaica's bloody political wars might not be in line for any design awards.
But Cleveland Downer's modest fifth-floor apartment is probably a lot safer than his last place of residence in the Red Hills Road district of Kingston, Jamaica's capital. There, on Nov. 19, he survived an attempt on his life that left an AK-47 bullet lodged near his spine.
Badly wounded though he was, Mr. Downer, 39 — known as Cassie — has fared much better than at least 23 other people who have been shot dead on or since that date, in what Jamaican police believe is a bloody feud within the street gang called The Commons.
Thought to be about 100 strong, the gang derives its name from a teeming, impoverished neighbourhood deemed so dangerous that taxi drivers would not take a Canadian visitor there, even by day.
Shot in the neck and upper body, Cleveland 'Cassie' Downer fled the mean streets of Kingston, Jamaica and arrived in Canada a few weeks later - one in a series series of back-and-forth trips in recent years. (Fernando Morales/Globe and Mail)
Related Articles
Recent
Under the gun in Jamaica
Internet Links
Walking the beat
It is home to Mr. Downer, who is also a landed immigrant in Canada. With no criminal record in this country, he was able, through marriage to his wife, Yvetta, a Canadian resident, to settle in the Toronto area about four years ago.
Shot in the neck and upper body as he and friends prepared to leave his house for a Jamaica Labour Party convention, he arrived in Canada a few weeks later, one in a series of back-and-forth trips in recent years, immigration records show.
In Jamaica, where he once operated a car wash, Mr. Downer is no stranger to police.
In 2002, he and three other men were charged in the deaths of seven people, including two children, who were killed when a 25-strong posse of gunmen set fire to several Red Hills Road houses and started shooting as the occupants fled. After several years of delays, he was acquitted late last summer when the case against him collapsed.
Before that, also in Kingston, he accumulated minor criminal convictions for trespassing, marijuana possession and assault. And as Jamaican authorities probe the intra-gang killings since November, which they believe primarily stem from quarrels over the allocation of government money used for gully-cleaning work, they say they would like to talk to Mr. Downer.
Britain's courts, too, know of Mr. Downer. In July, 2004, its Court of Appeal cited his name several times in approving a Jamaican citizen's bid for political asylum, stating that “there is a real question whether the state of Jamaica provides sufficiency of protection for an informer or supposed informer. . . .”
The unnamed asylum seeker contended that, as a suspected agent for the People's National Party, the JLP's archrival, he had been badly beaten up by a group of JLP activists and later witnessed the rape of his girlfriend and his sister by JLP members, allegedly because the women had taken the man to hospital.
Mr. Downer led the four-member group that roughed up the man, the court found. And complicating any police investigation was the fact that Mr. Downer's mother had a relationship with a police sergeant, described in the British ruling as “a source of information, which he telephones to Cleveland Downer, who sometimes gives money to the police.”
As for the ultimately abortive murder case against him — adjourned at one stage because the presiding judge failed to show up — “the lack of progress in Mr. Downer's trial is entirely consistent with the appellant's expert evidence,” the appeal court concluded.
Mr. Downer is well known in Kingston for his political connections, who include JLP General Secretary and local MP Karl Samuda, after whom a street is named in Red Hills Road. And with an election certain this year and a strong chance the JLP will end 18 straight years of rule by the scandal-dogged PNP, there is speculation he may return to lend a hand.
“Cassie is old guard, he'll be back for the election because Karl Samuda will need him and he's still in charge,” predicted Assistant Police Commissioner Les Green, who supervises the Jamaica Constabulary Force's organized-crime portfolio.
“But if he does come back he'll be vulnerable — that's why so many people have been killed. ... We'd like to talk to him about all that.”
Interviewed briefly by telephone, Mr. Downer said he was not, in fact, planning to return Jamaica for the election, but he offered no other information. It was unclear whether he is still receiving medical help in the Ontario hospital system or has been able to work.
After scheduling a meeting with a reporter, he failed to show up, and subsequent efforts to speak to him again were unsuccessful.
“He's not around,” said his wife, Yvetta, deflecting further questions and referring inquiries to Mr. Samuda in Kingston, who did not respond to a message left with his secretary seeking comment.
The politician and Mr. Downer nonetheless appear to be well acquainted.
Last month, Mr. Samuda accused police of bias and incompetence in probing the string of killings in Kingston since last November, claiming they were wrong to focus on Mr. Downer.
Not true, Mr. Green responded. He and other officers would like to talk to Mr. Downer about 23 mostly unsolved homicides and 13 woundings that they believe are all connected. Five of those killings took place on the day Mr. Downer was shot.
Nor would that be the first time Mr. Samuda has provided Mr. Downer with assistance. Back in 2002, when police announced that they wanted to interview him in connection with the seven homicides that became dubbed the 100 Lane Massacre, it was Mr. Samuda who brought him in.
“He insisted that I take him in because he has a perfectly valid alibi,” Mr. Samuda explained at the time.
Two years before that, Mr. Downer was charged with illegal possession of a gun and ammunition and with shooting at police, in connection with an incident that left two of his friends dead. Those charges, too, either were dropped or ended in an acquittal.
Whatever troubles Mr. Downer may have encountered in Jamaica, in Canada he has a clean slate.
Under Section 36 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, admissibility for would-be immigrants convicted of crimes committed abroad depends on the seriousness of the crimes.
The broad rule is that applicants are barred from entry if convicted of an offence whose Criminal Code equivalent carries a maximum penalty of at least 10 years imprisonment. However, miscreants guilty of lesser crimes often have a tough time too, said Toronto immigration lawyer Sergio Karas.
“We sometimes have difficulties with [authorities] over very minor types of offences, which they seem to take seriously ... sometimes good, hard-working people who years ago made a small slip are prevented from coming to Canada or are given the royal runaround.”
Mr. Downer's years-old criminal record, however, appears to have posed few problems.
In 1989, he was convicted of trespassing on the property of the Jamaica Telephone Company and fined 1,000 Jamaican dollars — about $20 under current exchange rates — or three months imprisonment.
In 1997, he received the same penalty for a conviction of assault.
And in 1999, a conviction for possessing marijuana yielded a penalty that was smaller still: a fine of $100 (Jamaican) or 10 days in jail.
If Mr. Downer does return to Jamaica for the coming election, likely to be held in the summer, he will join a democratic process that is always lively and often deadly.
Jamaica's homicide rate remains one of the highest in the world — last year the island's 2.7 million people experienced 1,340 killings, a 20-per-cent drop from the record set in 2005. Election years usually see spikes in violence.
In January, Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas warned of an ominous buildup of weapons in politically divided districts within Jamaica's major urban centres.
Detective Sergeant Barrington Huntley of the homicide squad concurred. “We're really worried about what will happen when the election is called,” he said.
Normally, the firearms used in crime are evenly divided between handguns and long guns. “But when the real war is on,” he said, “it's all rifles.”
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