Mayor of Kingston Desmond McKenzie (left) listens closely to Jamaica Labour Party caretaker for Kingston East and Port Royal, Peter Sangster, after yesterday's JLP Area Council One meeting at Port Royal All-Age. - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer

Kingston Mayor Desmond McKenzie said he will be making a formal report to the Police High Command this morning that gunmen from a well-known central Kingston community have threatened to kill him.

McKenzie, who was addressing Jamaica Labour Party supporters at the Area Council One meeting in Port Royal yesterday afternoon, said the threats were in relation to the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation's (KSAC) drive to clamp down on illegal operations as well as extortion in downtown Kingston's Pearnel Charles Arcade.

"The reports came to me from last night (Saturday night) as well as today that they are saying because of what I've done ... anywhere they see me (they will kill me)," McKenzie told reporters yesterday. The mayor said a police officer also informed him of the threats.

McKenzie said he had informed Minister of National Security Derrick Smith of the threats but has not yet made a formal complaint to the police.

Extortion plague

According to the mayor, buses plying the Kingston to Morant Bay route have been operating illegally from the arcade. The arcade, he said, has also become a breeding ground for extortionists who are terrorising the approximately 200 vendors who ply their trade there. McKenzie has gone on record as saying he would rather close the arcade than allow vendors to be victims.

Since March, the KSAC has made efforts to reduce illegal activities. This, the mayor is suggesting, has sparked the recent flare-up of violence in parts of central Kingston that has claimed 13 lives in three weeks.

"One person called me to say that they are willing to talk. The war can stop if I allow the buses to go back to the location. I would never bow to that," he says.

The Gleaner tried to make contact with police to corroborate McKenzie's claims in relation to reasons for the upsurge of violence in central Kingston but the Constabulary Communication Network said it had not yet formed an official theory for the cause of the murder wave.

Media reports have been suggesting that ongoing gang rivalry is behind the violence.

McKenzie says he is in dialogue with a prominent People's National Party activist who has contacted him with a view to initiating discussions with "an individual from the central Kingston community who will be crucial to putting an end to the violence."