Lead Stories

The declaration of a state of emergency, with its suspension of civil liberties, is not a tool that this newspaper readily places in the hands of a government. And not in normal times.

But these are not normal times in Jamaica - as was evidenced last week in west Kingston and elsewhere, when the security forces fought militias attempting to prevent the arrest of alleged drug lord Christopher Coke.

Mr Coke remains a fugitive, but his command structure in Tivoli Gardens was badly degraded and the immediate threat posed to the Jamaican state turned back. Law enforcement has used emergency powers to round up gangsters and assorted criminals and to impose a security blanket in Kingston and St Andrew.

The parishes of St Catherine and St James have also suffered gravely from gang violence.

In St Catherine's capital of Spanish Town and its environs, the One Order and Clansman gangs are engaged in a bloody fight for turf. In St James, the notorious Stone Crusher gang causes bloody mayhem in Montego Bay.

These gangs, and others, have to be stopped.

We recommend that the one-month life of the existing state of emergency be broadened to St Catherine and St James to afford the security forces greater powers to confront, and defeat, gangs in these areas.

It is better to bite the bullet now, when tourism is already absorbing a hit, rather than wait for a new crisis after a perceived recovery.