Crime is proving to be Jamaica's many-headed hydra - the monster in Greek mythology from whose body would sprout two or more heads if one was lopped off.

Towards the middle of this year, crime fighters and security officials were upbeat about the downward trend in some of the crime statistics. Traditional trouble spots had been showing signs of settling down and signs of fruit from new initiatives in places like Grants Pen Avenue in St. Andrew gave cause for much hope.

However, like a badly-treated disease, outbreaks have been popping up elsewhere, due in part to the migration of criminals, the eruption of long-festering social conflicts and new opportunities for criminality.

As we have highlighted in this edition, crime fighters in Montego Bay have their hands full dealing with several gangs scattered across inner-city communities. These are de factotraining factories for hoodlums deeply involved in the drug trade, gun running and the new lottery scam. The impact of this crime is a continuing erosion of the social fabric of the country.

As reported in today's edition, businesses are losing man-hours, church officials are changing the times for their meetings to reduce the likelihood of their members becoming victims of crime, employees sometimes opt to sleep at their workplaces rather than to venture out at a time when they might be more vulnerable to attacks, and millions of dollars are being invested in new, private security systems.

Of deep concern to us in the management of the Montego Bay situation is the cloud of suspicion and accusations over the heads of several policemen. Rumours have been rife in the city for months about the involvement of policemen in criminality and corruption, especially the lottery scam. By any standards, 14 policemen being held in 18 months as was reported last week for breaches of the Anti-Corruption Act is a major scandal. We expect that those held will be treated fairly, that is, considered innocent until proven guilty and be accorded due process under the law.

It nonetheless must be extremely problematic and debilitating for the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) to be policing not only external criminals but potentially internal ones as well. The danger is not only that investigations might be compromised by tip-offs and leaked information, but that undercover investigators will also be more at risk. This is true of any jurisdiction, but with fears of drug runners infiltrating law enforcement agencies, the JCF and the wider society have to be particularly vigilant.

While we expect community policy efforts to continue, greater attention will have to be paid to the JCF's systems of monitoring and investigating its own. We have to take it as a given that policemen like other citizens are corruptible. Systems of checks and counter-checking, although more expensive, will go much further if we are to make any significant dent in the crime wave.

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