Early Bird Phipps: Zeeks's Brother and the Spanglers' Man in New York

For more than twenty years, a painted face looked out over the corner of Matthews Lane and Beeston Street in Kingston. In February 2013, police painted it over.

The man on that wall was Glenford "Early Bird" Phipps — remembered in Matthews Lane for a basic school that still carries his name, remembered by Bob Marley's circle as the cook who went with them to Germany in 1980, and named in a 1991 New Jersey State Commission of Investigation report as the man who had headed the Spangler Posse's New York City operations. When he was killed in Kingston in 1990, he was working as Supervisor of Metropolitan Parks and Markets.

This documentary follows the record — the report, the reporting, and a poem by Kamau Brathwaite — to show how one life held all of those places at once, and what the record still cannot tell us.

The report's statements are an intelligence assessment by a state commission, not court findings. We found no record that Early Bird was ever charged in the United States. Scenes are reconstructions made for this film; they are not archival footage.

Chapters 0:00 The painted face 2:29 Chapter 1 — Matthews Lane 5:50 Chapter 2 — Bob Marley's cook 8:04 Chapter 3 — The American record 12:28 Chapter 4 — July 1990 15:11 Chapter 5 — The murals 17:13 Chapter 6 — Four pictures of one man

Sources New Jersey State Commission of Investigation, "Afro-Lineal Organized Crime" (March 1991) Jamaica Observer; The Gleaner; Ioan Grillo, "Jamaican Organized Crime After the Fall of Dudus Coke", CTC Sentinel (2014); Annie Paul, "Iconoclasm in Babylon" (2013); Kamau Brathwaite, "Trench Town Rock" (1994)

Watch next: Zeeks Phipps (the brother's story).

#Jamaica #TrueCrime #JamaicanHistory