In the context of Jamaica, it is quite easy to be sympathetic with the plan announced on Tuesday by Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller to have special teams of police doing nothing else except being about "in search of guns".

After all, we are just now into the fifth month of the year and more than 400 people have already been murdered, perhaps 80 per cent of these homicides were committed with guns. At this rate, we are well on course to pass the more than 1,200 murders committed in 2006, which, in a perverse way, was a 'good' year, in that homicides declined 20 per cent.

But as Mrs. Simpson Miller would have been aware when she spoke about these gun-search units in Parliament, we have been here before; many times, even if the mandate has not always been so specifically prescribed.

Indeed, that was essentially the assignment of Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams and the Crime Management Unit (CMU). For targeting guns also means targeting those who use them - gang leaders, extortionists and the like.

But in the case of the CMU, the society didn't like what it got, or so it was claimed. The CMU was accused never proven in a court of law, of acting with impunity and engagingin extra-judicial killings. Two decades earlier, similar claims were made of another police task force, which came to be called the Eradication Squad.

Other special teams may not have developed the same reputations for impunity, but their achievements have been far from stellar. Mostly, their tenures limped to an end or were forced to a halt in the face of public outcry. Indeed, Mrs. Simpson Miller's predecessor, P.J. Patterson, once called out the army as part of this gun-finding project and declared that they would not return to barracks until all the weapons were in. He never announced an end to the mission and the prevalence of guns remains.

The larger point, therefore, is that Prime Minister Simpson Miller, her security minister, Dr. Phillips or Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas need to provide the country with further and better particulars.

In the case of the PM and Dr. Phillips, they must outline clear policy parameters for these units. The search for guns, however legitimate an objective, ought not to be the cause or cover for partisan behaviour. They should be clear, too, that being young, male, poor and a dweller in a decayed urban community does not automatically translate into being a gun-toting criminal.

In that regard, the Commissioner must outline clear operational procedures and a transparent process of accounting and review. Success, or the lack thereof, must be measured. This programme should not automatically mean more police homicides.

In the meantime, there is another, more mundane matter on the national security agenda, of which we were reminded in the aftermath of Monday's daring gun robbery and killings in May Pen, Clarendon. It is about the closed-circuit TV (CCTV) cameras that were long ago promised for urban centres.

Very few of these, as we are aware, have been installed. Yet their utility has been recognised in other jurisdictions. We understand that CCTV is not a fix for crime in Jamaica, but it is a help. And a relatively cheap one at that.