We are told, nay assured, by our all-wise politicians that the conditions which existed on May 23, 2010 that justified the limited State of Emergency, no longer exist. Is that so?

The attacks on the State, as exemplified by the launch of open warfare on the security forces in May have, in our view, intensified, even if we don’t see plumes of smoke bellowing from police stations.

In one week, three policemen have been gunned down and one shot and injured. Monday night’s killing of Special Constable James Lemmie on Young Street in Spanish Town, St Catherine brings to nine the number of police officers to be murdered by criminals since the start of the year.

We guess that we need to see burning police stations now to convince us that the criminals are back in stride or that the lifting of the State of Emergency was premature and unwise.

We have never argued that the State of Emergency is the perfect crime-fighting plan. But we understand the need to use it to dismantle the criminal forces and their network, to give us the psychological space to ensure they never regain their pre-May 23 strength.

Perhaps now we might begin to see the real reason the heads of the security forces, and especially Police Commissioner Owen Ellington requested the extension of the State of Emergency for another month.

They know what it is to send young men, like the 22-year-old Special Constable Lemmie, to face cold-hearted gunmen..and risk death. They have to give the orders to these men and women under their command to face down the criminals, in order that the rest of us can feel some sense of safety and security. Have we no feeling for them? Is power politics so sweet?

For our part, we would like to assure Commissioner Ellington that we identify with his pain. We also believe him when he says:

“Our intelligence and the actions of criminals over the last week indicate calculated assaults on police personnel as we continue to disrupt and displace criminal gangs across the island.”

We sense that Mr Ellington’s appeal to the Police Control Centre to broadcast security reminders to all police personnel on a regular basis, in order to keep members alert, is a cry of pain and anguish from a man who must feel he has been given basket to carry water and then, even after that, wantonly abandoned by the leaders of our land.

Minister of National Security Dwight Nelson, in decrying the killing of three policemen in five days as “a deliberate and vicious assault on the agents of the state who are duty bound to risk their lives to protect the people of Jamaica”, is not by itself going to bring consolation.

Does he need us to remind him that his Government has the power to do what is right by the security forces and the people of Jamaica?