Spanish Town turmoil – $400m-a-year racket; gangsters use church as cover; brazen attack on police station and hospital

Soldiers on patrol at the Spanish Town bus park last Friday. (Jamaica Gleaner photo)

(Jamaica Gleaner) Police investigators believe the Clansman gang, one of the deadliest criminal organisations in the country, is raking in over J$400 million a year from its nefarious activities.

“A moderate estimate is about J$448 million a year,” a senior police investigator based in the gang’s Spanish Town enclave told The Sunday Gleaner.

Investigators said most of this wealth, which is derived from the gang’s primary activities of extortion and contract killings, is used to purchase high-powered weapons and vehicles, and to finance an operation that is highly organised.

“Sometimes we would see them going around in