It was a calculated plan for cold-blooded murder and it worked. In a few minutes of ’bold-faced’’ action (the description is Acting Police Commissioner James Philbert’s) two men, disguised as construction workers, executed Peter Garcia even as he was in police custody-not just in the general sense of the term but with police officers actually at his side and with dozens of other officers in and around the nearby Rio Claro Magistrates’ Court,

Calculating that they couldn’t wait for the cover of night since an incarcerated Garcia would, by then, be relatively safe behind the walls of the prison where he was being kept on murder and kidnap charges, the killers struck at mid-morning, the element of surprise so complete that, after the initial shot, they still had time to make sure the job was complete .

They must have counted, too, on an eventual lowering of the guard since at his first court appearance Garcia was both defended and kept at bay not by two constables at his side but by heavily armed officers who had surrounded the court house aware, as they must have been, of the murderous long-standing ’family feud’ that was to have its denouement in Monday’s murder. Or, perhaps not, all the signs now suggesting that the ’war’’ is ongoing.

If the country was shocked by the killing a few months ago of a soldier’s wife, Camille Daniel, who drove into the West End Police Station in an attempt to escape car-jackers who were holding her at gunpoint and who was shot dead in the station’s compound, it must have been even more shocked by how Garcia was gunned down. In the former case, it could be said to have been a spontaneous chain of events whereas, in the latter, the contempt for the police is reflected in the premeditated killing.

Mr Philbert has said that the police response to Garcia’s killing would ’show criminals that we are in charge’’ but, welcome as it will be, catching the killers will not be enough to demonstrate that since criminals, armed to the teeth, have long been thumbing their noses-and their UZIs-at the law and at the lawmen who, on the ground, are seen to be its personification.

The police and indeed the country are facing a criminal insurrection and the response required is one that recognises the rapidly rising terror of the threat, that is, one that sees to the formation of a really formidable Police Service matched by an overall justice system that is resolute and prompt even as it is fair.