It was a sad day last Tuesday. Try as I may not to think about the most horrible news day for a very long time it lingers in the mind. I spoke to My Friend P and he, too, is distressed.

What was it? All of 15 people reported [accent on reported because when the real figure comes in it might well be closer to 20] killed in one night! It disturbed me quite unlike any other time before. I am not sure why.

Was it the sheer cruelty of five people being murdered in one community? Was it the brutal rape of an innocent child at the said scene of that murder? Or was it the compete nausea of thinking of the petrified eight-year-old child who was found hiding under the bed while the brutality reigned around her on that night? Something was bound to make us snap from the reports for it was not the scenes from people who lay claim to civilised behaviour.

I wonder what our new, sleepy-looking Minister of National Security is going to do about this crime? When he was outside looking in he spoke as if there was a magic solution to the problem. Well, apparently, Smiths are not Wizards. It was particularly disturbing to hear our new man at the helm last week on television speaking about how Government is responsible for policy and not the operational issues need to curb this crime monster. What drivel!

P and I are disturbed because it is so evident that the people who need to be responding to this lunacy of mayhem are either deaf, blind, or just plain don't give a damn about the volume of lives that are being violently removed from the isle.

Is it because they are not touched? Is that what it will really require for there to be serious and sustained approaches to curbing this scourge of crime across the nation - attacks on mayhem on the people with the power to fix the problem?

The police are aware because they are numbered very high in the statistics of the Jamaican annual death roll. And no, they are not being targeted. Think on this logically, if we are able to slaughter well over 1,000 people each year the odds of some of the dead being cops, teachers, nurses, engineers, journalists, artistes and businessmen or women is pretty high, is it not? We don't see many politicians getting killed though - maybe that is why they really don't get it.

Email comments to: myfriendp@hotmail.com