When Timothy McVeigh blew up the Alfred P Murray Federal Building in Oklahoma on April 19, 1995 there were signs indicating that an attack was coming.

The attack was not just specific to McVeigh, but there were indications that white supremacist groups were planning to retaliate for the fatal shooting of a member in a shootout with federal agents at Ruby Ridge in 1992.

This threat was further provoked by the Waco Texas stand off between federal agents and members of a religious cult ‘The Branch Davidian’ that resulted in the death of 82 civilians after an attempted assault on the building in 1993.

McVeigh left clues that he was planning an attack but they were ignored. The tension generated by the bloodletting during the aforementioned conflicts was no secret.

Wayne Snell, a white supremacist leader who was being executed on the same day that the bombing took place, openly said there would be a bombing to avenge his death on his execution day.

Law enforcement failed to act and 168 persons lost their lives.

The attack on the Twin Towers in Manhattan New York on September 11, 2001 succeeded largely because of ignored intelligence.

Several law enforcement agencies had pieces of information that they neither shared or acted on, hence the later creation of the Department of Homeland Security after that blunder. Thousands died and the world was never quite the same again.

The recovery of 320 pipe bombs in Tivoli Gardens recently is not a clue, not a piece of surreptitious intelligence, it’s an obvious indication that the gangs are planning to increase their level of violence and type of terror.

This terror will be aimed at all of us. The question is how will we respond?

Will we focus on adjusting laws to combat this new level of destruction that will most likely lead to the murder of law enforcement officers, Jamaican citizens and enhance the level of control that the gangs currently enjoy?

Will we militarise our society in an attempt to combat this group?

Will we look on countries like Singapore, Taiwan and El Salvador and ask ourselves what would they do if they knew that a few thousands of their criminals were about to graduate to bombing their country into submission?

Will we do what we can do once and for all to defeat this group? Or will we pretend it’s simply a law enforcement problem and must be treated as such? Will we worry about the bombers’ ‘rights’?

Will members of our wisest and wealthiest lobby worldwide for their protection? What will be the way we approach this elevation of the gang threat? … as a country intent on being realistic and proactive, or as a country that simply hopes for the best and keeps pretending that their existing laws and practices can defeat this group of thugs that have already destroyed our country and our way of life?

Hindsight is 20/20 vision. If Israel had known that Hamas was planning the recent attack they would have attacked first and prevented it.

If the German people knew the Nazis (who were largely a bunch of criminals) were going to destroy their country they would have stamped them out at the genesis of their formation in 1920.

Well, you don’t need clairvoyance, because I am telling you that this is a new beginning… just like I told you that the introduction of the Indecom Act would destroy any gains made from the Tivoli incursion and spiral our murder rate. This new tool they are amassing shows an intention to take the fight to law enforcement and to create mayhem.

This can go further. There is precedent that a terrorist organisation can become a political party in Government.

Look at the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Sinn Fein. Look on Hamas in Palestine – criminal organisations that become so strong they become a Government.

Be careful. I have seen both political parties whilst in government in my lifetime unable to control gangs that they failed to destroy. What needs to be done? I won’t waste word limits by repeating myself on what needs to be done. I have stated that already and repeatedly in this column.

What I will say is do what is necessary and start by tearing out chapter 13 out of the Constitution – that being the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.

Why? Because although it is an incredible document that guarantees freedom for us all, it also prevents us from defending ourselves from the gangs with the use of remand acts.

It leaves us with states of emergency and the normal practices of criminal investigations.

You can’t fight thousands of killers intent on wreaking havoc with bombs with laws designed to fight organised crime.

You will lose the fight if it is approached in this way and the country as we know it, will follow.

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