Police Commissioner Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin appears to have been concerned that after his recent briefing, the press chose to highlight his announcement that the MP5 semi-automatic weapon is to supersede the M16 assault rifle that has become the almost standard issue for patrol cops in Jamaica.

He seems to believe that the tone of the coverage implies that criminals, with their access to high-powered weapons, are to be given the advantage over policemen and women. The fear, therefore, is that it will be difficult to get the support of the public, and perhaps more important, rank-and-file members of the constabulary.

We believe that Admiral Lewin is oversensitive on the matter and that his agitation is misplaced. What really should exercise the police chief's mind is whether he has done the right thing. And, he has.

The next thing is for Admiral Lewin to continue to make a clear, logical and cogent case for his action. In that, he is on the right track.

At the same time, we would advise the police chief to bring dispassion to his media analysis, understanding the press is a purveyor of fact rather than the public relations arm of the Jamaica Constabulary Force. If he appreciates this and does not perceive an independent press as an irritant or obstructionist force, Mr Lewin will find that the media are critical allies in his efforts to transform the police force into the professional organisation that the vast majority of Jamaicans want it to be.

Of course, Admiral Lewin is not, as the saying goes, about to reinvent the wheel. He has, indeed, been articulating many of the concerns of his recent predecessors.

He has, for example, made the point that the constabulary is riddled with corruption and has been burdened by Jamaica's high level of police homicides - nearly 200 a year. Human rights groups say that many of those homicides are deliberate, extra-judicial killings.

But the evidence patently suggests that many of the police homicides are the result of poor training, ineffective management, and low levels of accountability. Last week's accidental shooting of a child by a policeman chasing an illegal taxi embodies all these failings.

It is in that context that Admiral Lewin has to continue to sell his MP5 and other initiatives. Or, as he put it in his speech to the Jamaica Employers' Federation last Tuesday, the primacy of brains over guns.

Indeed, many Jamaicans have been disturbed over the years at the sight of uniformed and plainclothes cops strutting about with M16 rifles casually slung across their shoulders, or held nonchalantly out of the open windows and doors of vehicles. It is as if these assault weapons defined the Jamaica Constabulary Force; and unsurpri-singly, its members largely behaved in that fashion - a paramilitary group on the alert for combat.

In the process, collateral damage was regarded as inevitabile, whether it was the child in Spanish Town, Janice Allen, or the hundreds others killed by wild and wanton fire. Yet, all this did little to enhance Jamaica's security.

So, Mr Lewin is pushing ahead with the inherited initiative to remove the M16 rifle from common use. That is good, but as he has made clear, just one of many initiatives. He need not stutter or apologise about it.

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