They call themselves Fatherless, a group of armed young men who have lost their fathers in gang wars in Trench Town, a Kingston inner city of bullet-pocked homes and birthplace of reggae.
High on marijuana laced with cocaine and armed to the teeth, the gang is among the many in Jamaica which fight over turf, drug money and influence as muscle men for political parties.
Last year, five members of Fatherless lost their lives in gang wars, prompting one of the mothers of a gang member who was killed to say she was "glad" that her son had been taken out, because "somebody had to stop him".
"Death is not uncommon in these parts of Jamaica. It has reached such a point that people have become numb to it. It is scary," says a resident, who is too scared to be named.
Chilling
The island of 2.7m people, which is slightly smaller than Connecticut, has one of the highest murder rates in the world.
The figures are chilling - there were 1,674 murders in 2005, up from 1,471 murders the year before. Last year, the number of murders came down to 1,340.
So far this year, there have been about 300 murders.
The never-ending spiral of gun crime has led to a vicious cycle of killings on both sides - nearly a dozen policemen have been killed on duty this year alone, and civil rights group allege that the police have also been trigger happy.
Crime poster
Things have worsened to such an extent that recently schools in the Arnett Gardens community closed down after rising gang violence in the area. The number of students attending schools has dropped by 40%.
"Teachers cry, teachers shake... When me hear the gunshots start, me try crawl - you know like when you watching a war show and soldiers crawl with them gun," a young male teacher told reporters after the latest round of violence.
Crime in Jamaica is not new. According to a CIA report, "deteriorating economic conditions during the 1970s led to rising violence as gangs affiliated to major political parties, evolved in powerful organised crime networks involved in international drug smuggling and money laundering."
"The cycle of violence, drugs and poverty has served to impoverish large sectors on the populace," the report says. Continuing double-digit unemployment does not help matters.
'Undermining growth'
For a long time, Jamaica has been a transhipment port for Colombian cocaine. A lot of the cocaine gets smuggled out into the islands and sold. Drug smugglers from Haiti trade sophisticated guns for marijuana and cocaine, and the island is therefore awash with guns.
The World Bank in a recent report says crime in the Caribbean - and it's mostly referring to Jamaica - is "undermining growth, threatening human welfare, and impeding social development".
In inner cities like Trench Town, Tivoli Gardens and Denham Town - scene of a six-hour gun battle between a gang of teenage boys armed with AK-47s and M-16s last month - this means high levels of illiteracy, teenage pregnancy, unemployment and nearly every household involved in some kind of criminal activity, major or minor.
A Trench Town street
Some 11,000 policemen, including 2,500 specially equipped frontline fighters, are engaged in fighting crime on the island, but the force's reputation has been sullied in the past by allegations of corruption.
Deputy Commissioner Mark Shields, a Scotland Yard officer on secondment to the Jamaican police, says there was a 10% increase in homicides in the first three months of 2007 compared with the same period in 2006. But, he says he is not "over concerned".
'Drugs and turf'
"The reality is that there is high crime in Jamaica, but it is in the crime hotspots," he says. "The perception is the whole of Jamaica has crime, which is not true."
Mr Shields said the quality of police investigations into the crimes had improved, and the courts were recognising the fact.
The hotspots are areas like St James, Kingston, St Andrews, Trench Town and Denham Town - a mix of inner cities and high-unemployment urban neighbourhoods where young gangs high on crack cocaine and armed with M-16s and AK-47s fight to kill.
"The fighting is mostly in the inner cities. These are mostly gang related fights over drugs and turf," says Karl Angell of the Jamaica police.
A bullet pocked house in Trench Town
Gangs fight with AK-47's and M-16's in inner cities
Two years ago, the police launched Operation Kingfish, an elaborate plan to infiltrate the main gangs and take them out.
The feared gang Klansman is now, according to the police, a "shadow of its old self", with the leader of the group having been killed in a shootout. The other big gang, Joel Andem, was also busted by the police during the same year and its leader was captured.
The police say there have been crack-downs on cocaine smuggling in Jamaica, with substantial seizures of the drug being made last year. But it is hard pressed to explain why murders are shooting up again this year.
Mark Shields denies that this year's upsurge is related to the forthcoming general elections on the island.
Civil rights groups like Jamaicans For Justice say that the police do not have a clue about combating gun crime and have killed many people themselves.
The group says that 227 people were killed by the police in Jamaica last year, up from 202 in 2005, and 168 in 2004.
"The police say these killings happened during shootouts. But eyewitness reports tell a different story," says Caroline Gomez of the rights group.
Analysts say Jamaica's culture of crime is a larger, social problem and will take more than police action to solve.
"What we have on our hands is a culture of crime and it's going to take some time to reverse it. Collectively, as a society, we have sat by and allowed the culture to develop," says Vernon Daley, a local journalist.
Improving the economy, combating joblessness and cleaning up politics would be a good first step to rid this sunny island of this fear.
But, how did we get to where we are? One man who remembers vividly what life was like in Kingston in the '30s and '40s is Enrico Stennett. Remember him? 'Buckra Massa Pickney' is back to take us down memory lane. It's a story of nostalgia and social decadence.
Stowed away
Enrico, a half-white Jamaican boy, was stolen from his family in St James and taken to Kingston by two of his cousins. After years of disillusionment, he stowed away to England in the late 1940s. He suffered tremendously for years in racist Britain, but he himself went on to play a significant role in the betterment of the lot of black people, especially newly arrived West Indians, in the 1950s London.
He has been back in Jamaica for a while now, and in his early 80s, but the memories of his youthful days in Kingston are as sharp as a razor. Enrico: "Downtown Kingston, as it is called today, is quite different from the Kingston of old. The old Kingston was a polite and orderly place, the streets were clean and there was very little violence ... There was no begging or swearing on the street, no drunken men hanging around on street corners, only white sailors."
"As adolescents, we were free to go anywhere as there was no part of Kingston that was out of bounds, and both young girls and boys could leave their homes and stroll along the streets as far as they wished without any fear of violence or improper approach by anyone."
The popular music at the time was black American, and young people were tuned in to Count Bassie Orchestra, Duke Ellington, Glen Miller, Benny Goodman, etc. Their music was adopted and played by Jamaican orchestras such as Milton McPherson's, Redver Cook's, Roy White's, Doc Bromwell's, and other great bands with musicians such as saxophonist Jocelyn Trott.
"The jitterbug, jive, and the bobby sox were the order of the day, and thousands of Jamaicans would gather around the houses of people who could afford a wireless to listen to the music of Geraldo and his Orchestra with the mellow, sweet voice of their black Jamaican brother, Archie Lewis, singing Beautiful Dreamer," he recalled.
While jazz, blues and bee bop were the most popular genres, there were also Cuban rumba, mento and calypso. Like now, competing on the dance floor was a common feature at dances, with folks imitating the Nicolas Brothers, Fred Astaire and all the great dancers of the day. The great American singers, too, were their idols.
Popular music
"The soothing voice of Lena Horne, the melodious voice of Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Bessie Smith and the Andrews Sisters, all of these people were popular in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s when music was at its best. They brought comfort and happiness, which eased our daily struggles in life," he declared.
It was a time when blacks were still regarded as second-class citizens who were exempt from holding certain jobs and executive positions. For instance, the chief of police and the inspectors were white. The highest position that a black man could attain in the police force was that of sergeant. Menial tasks, such as sweeping the streets and working in factories, were reserved for blacks. Yet, people were generally safe from harm.
Enrico: "It is a fact that there was much poverty, high unemployment and little to do at the time, but somehow we did seem to have the inner strength and self-respect to overcome all the obstacles that poverty brought, without stealing from our neighbours." The importation of American movies, however, was to be the beginning of the end of the peace and sobriety that downtown Kingston enjoyed.
"From the time I was a child until I became an adolescent, there was little crime of any kind, and murder was non-existent on the island, but as the youngsters in Kingston became young men, they began to take on the role of their American heroes. This was the destruction of an innocent people," he claimed.
Major cinemas
There were five major cinemas in Kingston: The Ward Theatre, The Majestic, Gaiety, Palace, and Carib, which were frequented mainly by white people. Movies featuring cowboys killing Indians, Al Capone, Baby-Faced Nelson, John Dillinger, and Bonnie and Clyde were popular. The young men imitated these characters, and began to feint shooting at each other with wooden guns that they had made.
"Some of the young men made the movie stars their heroes and role models, while they lusted after the beautiful women. Now, they all wanted to be movie stars and gangsters, emulating what they saw on the screen each night of the week. Young boys changed their names and were now known as John Dee, Al Capone ... and names of other American crooks and gangsters.
"The adoption of the American culture, which was bred on guns and violence, was the beginning of the downfall of Jamaica. There would now be gangs shooting each other, and acting out the fights they had seen on the screen. Jamaican culture was now changing and we were becoming Americanised, not for the better, but for the worse," he lamented.