ROCKING back and forth in her tiny classroom chair, a three-year-old girl with a blank stare repeatedly sings: 'A so me know mi lose a fren, lose a fren'.

It's a line from the chorus of a reggae song in which singer I-Octane broods over the loss of a friend.

"She does this everyday, just rocking and singing," said Andrea Williams, principal of Carnival Basic School in Tivoli Gardens.

The child, whose name the teacher withheld to protect her identity, has been displaying this worrisome behaviour since returning to school following the May 24 incursion by the security forces into the community to apprehend reputed don Christopher 'Dudus' Coke and repel rampaging gunmen who had torched two police stations and caused mayhem in sections of downtown Kingston.

Coke is wanted wanted in the US on drug and gun-running charges.

"One of the guys who was killed was the breadwinner [of her family]," Williams told the Sunday Observer Friday.

Since the intense, three-day police/military operation, the children of Tivoli Gardens have been displaying symptoms and behaviours experts say are consistent with those of traumatised survivors of war-torn areas like Iraq and Afghanistan, for example.

At Carnival Basic and the nearby Charles Chin-Loy Basic -- two of the five basic schools that serve the community -- the behaviour is telling.

Teachers say the aggression among them now is at a level not before seen. Where bright smiles and cheerful expressions once lit up classrooms, there are now sad, long faces. Once playful children are now withdrawn "and extremely quiet". Laughter is replaced by constant, unprovoked crying and some students who had never wet their beds before are now doing so, according to Carnival Basic teacher Sophia Wallace.

"This is a sign of trauma," she said.

The children have grown resentful and fearful of the security forces, moreso the police, the teachers said. Those who used to run freely through the community no longer do so out of fear of the security personnel who have camped here. When they do venture out, they request companionship from their mother or some other adult.

Still more troubling is the fact that the children at Carnival Basic -- none of them older than five years old -- have been harbouring thoughts of revenge for the alleged abuses meted out to their loved ones.

"They told us that they are going to bomb off the police and soldiers heads," Wallace said, adding that the students now describe the police as "wicked", and that the boys no longer want to become policemen when they grow up.

According to the teachers, students from the five basic schools were given blank pieces of paper and asked to draw what they saw during the three-day incursion. At Carnival and Charles Chin-Loy, the only two schools the Sunday Observer was able to visit on Friday afternoon, the returned pieces spoke volumes.

Several of the drawings depicted policemen holding guns to men's heads and firing. Some showed scores of dead people, while others were matted with red crayon, indicating blood everywhere.

"They [the students] believe that the police are out to kill them," said Veronica Sewell-Morgan, principal of the 130-student Charles Chin-Loy Basic.

Another teacher there reported that one day recently, one of her students went out into the schoolyard to play. She said a female soldier complimented the child, saying what a "nice little girl" she was. But instead of accepting the compliment, the child replied in a swift rebuke.

"Don't talk to me because you kick off Marjorie door!" the teacher said, quoting the child.

Five-year-old Maurice and his two sisters allegedly watched as the police beat their father. Now Maurice holds an unflattering view of the lawmen. Asked what he thinks of the police, Maurice looked at his mother Lavern -- a 26-year-old cosmetologist -- who gave him the go ahead to answer.

"Dem wicked!" Maurice scowled, contorting his little face. "Dem beat daddy."

His eight-year-old sister, Becky, has been having problems sleeping since the operation. When she does go to bed she jumps up in the middle of the night in a panic.

"I feel sad because of the whole heap of gunshots," Becky said, her head hung low. "Dem beat mi father and [swell] up him back and burst his mouth," the little girl said.

Lavern, who attends a Seventh-day Adventist Church in West Kingston said the children are so traumatised that they refuse to eat at times. She said her three-year-old daughter often bursts into loud crying, for no apparent reason.

The mother of three is of the view that no one in authority cares. "Nobody comes to my house and ask if we have children or if we need counselling," she said.

A sea of complaints alleging wide-scale abuse and extrajudicial killings have poured into the outposts of the Office of the Public Defender which was set up in the community following the police/military operation.

A total of 73 people in and around Tivoli Gardens and a soldier were killed. More than 50 people, civilians and members of the security forces alike, were also injured.

Last week counsellors from the Victim Support Unit and UNICEF visited the schools there and led the children through a few exercises in an effort to start the healing process. The names of students most affected were taken for one-on-one sessions. In tandem with that, a group of private doctors and psychologists yesterday staged a health fair at the community centre.

Given all that has transpired, the police too, know that there is a lot to be done to rebuild a positive relationship with the residents of this community and to repair their shattered image in the eyes of the children.

Come Tuesday, they will meet with principals of the schools in Tivoli Gardens and surrounding communities to plot the way forward. They will also be working with organisations such as Peace and Love in Schools or PALS, Superintendent Terrence Bent told the Sunday Observer last week.