THE police have established a special investigative team to track cop killers as part of its response to the recent spate of murders of police officers, it emerged yesterday.

The police commissioner, Francis Forbes, spoke of the special investigative team when senior officers as well as the executive of the Police Federation met on Friday with national security minister, Peter Phillips, to review security issues.

Ten police officers have been killed in Jamaica so far this year, six of them within a month and two within a 24-hour period last week. Seventy-one cops have been killed in Jamaica in the past five years.

There is a growing belief that policemen have been targeted, and according to an official statement on Friday’s session, Phillips told the police officers that the recent attacks on the police were in part the result of the successes the security forces have been having against the narcotics trade.

There would be no let-up, but instead an intensification, Phillips was quoted as saying.

Specific initiatives discussed at the meeting have not been disclosed but Phillips had earlier told the Observer: “We had a full and frank exchange and emerged with a unity of purpose to ensure that we are united with the law-abiding Jamaicans to isolate criminals to ensure that the country is taken over by law, order and decency.”

“We are confident that with the decisions arrived at, we can regain the momentum we enjoyed prior to the last three weeks and see how we can soothe the nerve of the public as well as the police,” Forbes had said on Friday. He, at the time, gave no details.

The police have stepped up patrols putting more members of the constabulary on the streets as part of a wider crime-fighting effort, and according to the official statement on Friday’s meeting, Forbes stressed that the constabulary remained resolute “in both tracking down killers of their colleagues and in protecting the public”.

There was no specifics on the operation of the special investigative team who was at its helm and senior officials were unavailable last night to clarify these issues.

However, Forbes stressed in the statement that “anyone who took the life of a policeman would be relentlessly pursued”.

At the same time the constabulary called on the government to fast-track legislative changes, equipment and other measures to put the police at their optimum in fighting criminals.

The police also pressed the government to redouble its efforts to ensure that hanging is resumed, in keeping with Jamaican law.

Police officials had warned that with the wave of attacks on their colleagues, no one would be safe in Jamaica.

“We need the public to realise that if the police can be killed with impunity then they are even at greater risk and that’s why we need their support and co-operation,” said assistance commissioner, Novelette Grant, who is chairman of the Police Officers Association (POA), which groups senior cops. ” We are not saying we are special … in terms of the sanctity of life but, you cannot as a society feel safe when people kill off your police and nothing is done about it.”