* A 14-year-old girl — Santoya Campbell — is brutally killed; her body stuffed into a garbage bag and dumped near her school in Westmoreland.

* A retired nurse — Mrs Hyacinth Hayden — is attacked and stabbed to death in her house in Trelawny.

* Two men — one of them said to be in his late 60s — are shot dead at a shop on Molynes Road by gunmen travelling in a car.

* Police Constable Orville Preddie is slaughtered at a bar in Manchester by gunmen after they found out he was a cop.

* A young banker — 27-year-old Kirt Adlam — is murdered by gunmen, his body found with multiple gunshot wounds in his car on Woodpecker Avenue in Kingston.

Those, and the many other murders that have led to the stunning statistic that the country is averaging 3.2 homicides per day are enough to make any sane person afraid.

Yet, our national security minister, Mr Peter Bunting, and Police Commissioner Dr Carl Williams are telling us that we should not be unduly alarmed at this time.

Really, gentlemen?

The angry public reaction to that appeal — most coming after Mr Bunting’s statement in Parliament on Tuesday — is quite understandable.

Mr Bunting did not help his case either when he declared that, if the current rate of killings continues, “we could see the month ending with approximately 100 murders”.

Minister Bunting and Commissioner Williams should therefore tell us when would be an appropriate time to be alarmed, because they, obviously, aren’t.

The fact, though, is that the relatives, friends and associates of the Jamaicans who make up those cold statistics are already panicking, even as they grieve their loss.

Unlike Minister Bunting and Commissioner Williams, those Jamaicans — fellow human beings who have a right to life — are not privileged enough to qualify for protection from bodyguards or, as both men call them, ‘Close Protection Officers’, paid by the State.

Messrs Bunting and Williams have told us that the spike in murders in January is due to gang violence in the St Catherine North Police Division.

Well done, gentlemen, you may now take a seat at the front of the class.

And, if your analysis is correct, we hope that the plans for policing that area and outlined by the minister will have some effect in stemming the murder toll.

What we can’t accept though, is a shrugging off of the reality that is staring ordinary Jamaicans in the face each day.

One final question intrigues us. Since you knew that the St Catherine North Police Division is where nearly all of the killings occurred, what were you doing about it before it ballooned out of control, and what happened to the proactive policing that we have been promised?