More than 2,000 of our lawmen are now at their homes on sick-out, in a continued move to force the Government to settle wage negotiations. As each day passes, police command laments that the numbers of officers not reporting to duty continues to rise.

With rural parishes most adversely affected, police say their contingency plan is being stretched to its limit.

"The parishes of Manchester and St. James are the worst to be affected, but the contingency plan is holding with the army and ISCF police being deployed to hot spot areas, and prisons," said the Director of Communications at the Jamaica Constabulary Force, Karl Angell.

The sick-out comes at a time when rural areas have seen an increase in crime from 'importee' gunmen coming from the Corporate Area. Although Angell says that the police's contingency plan is holding, several senior police officers strongly disagreed.

"The impact on Clarendon is severe. The day-to-day runnings of covering criminal areas and courts are still there, but our activities in social and crime fighting has been curtailed significantly ... The number of patrols sent out is reduced as well as our response time," said Superintendent Derrick 'Cowboy' Knight who is in charge of Clarendon.

"If you were to come and walk through the town (Spanish Town) you would see that there is no presence of officers ... Their ongoing presence is necessary to maintain stability and this has been hampered," said the commanding officer at the Spanish Town Police Station, Superintendent Harry Daley.

Several calls to rural stations rang unanswered, leading to the belief that several rural stations were in fact dormant.

Police would not deny that some stations had minimal numbers of persons on duty, but gave the assurance that although some of the posts were being unanswered, the general emergency 119 number was still being "relatively" manned.

Police and the Ministry of National Security have been deadlocked in wage disputes over the last few months, with Government proposing a 17.5 per cent wage increase (over a two-year period), against the police federation's 75 per cent increase proposal.

Efforts to contact the Ministry of National Security to comment on the impending crisis, proved futile up to press time.