Commissioner of Police, Michael A. DeSilva - The impact of gang culture and related violence continues to generate fear among communities across Bermuda. The nature of the violence, often committed in neighbourhoods and public places and witnessed by innocent citizens, presents an ongoing challenge to both police and community partners. I believe that Bermuda recognises such a challenge can only be met from creating strong partnership arrangements, ensuring that offenders are caught and convicted, ensuring help and rehabilitation is on offer to those who want it and ensuring that communities have a strong moral voice.

1.      Gun Crime Overview

Figure 1: Classification Of Firearm Incidents

Confirmed Incidents are defined as those where forensic evidence confirms that a firearm has been used e.g. a person has a gunshot wound, a spent casing or ammunition round is recovered, a firearm is seized or there is evidence of ballistic damage, such as a bullet hole in a door.

2.      Injuries and Fatalities

3.      Crimes and Incidents of Note - 2010

In the first 11 days of 2010 there have been 3 Confirmed firearms incidents.

4.      Background

·         July 2006: fatal shooting of Jason Lightbourne at Ord Rd, Warwick.

·         August 2006: former Minister of Labour, Home Affairs and Public Safety, the Hon. K.H. Randolph Horton met with the Commissioner of Police to discuss law enforcement strategies and legislation to combat an increasing trend in gang-related violence and anti-social behaviour.

·         December 2007: Within days of each other, Jakai Harford was involved in an injury shooting and Aquil Richardson was the victim of a fatal shooting at Horseshoe Rd , Southampton. BPS initiated ‘Operation Safer Streets’ (OSS) and implemented round-the-clock armed patrols working in tandem with the Police Support Unit (PSU), patrol officers and Community Action Teams (CAT) to target policing hotspots, and prolific offenders.

·         OSS was deployed throughout 2008 and 2009 and provided key operational successes including the recovery of firearms and drugs and the convictions of offenders.

·         July 2009: OSS enhanced with the development of a targeting approach that designates those persons posing the most significant threat to the community: “Prolific Priority Offenders” (PPO). There are 4 strands to the PPO approach:

o        Prevent and Deter - to stop young offenders escalating into prolific offenders and to prevent children and young people from becoming involved in criminality

o        Catch and Convict - approach with all partners focusing on the same key groups of offenders who are causing the most crime

o        Rehabilitate and Resettle - to provide prolific offenders with options to reform

o        Influence - shaping and directing community perspectives to raise awareness and to work together to tackle gang violence.

·         This created an intelligence-led policing approach and evidence-based deployment decisions. Arrests in 2009 increased by 40% to over 4,500; meaning 1,300 more arrests were made last year than previously.

·         October 2009: the BPS restructured the Service to consolidate ‘Operation Safer Streets’ as a long-term initiative; the Service now deploys:

o        85% of staff to operational policing; 10% to Intelligence; 5% to admin & training

o        24/7 firearms response patrols

o        A dedicated Gang Targeting team.

·         In January 2010 the BPS received gang training and tactical advice from the FBI Safe Streets & Gang Unit that endorsed the BPS Gang Violence Reduction Strategy and advocated the adoption of a co-located Task Force approach to tackling the gang problem.

5.      Current Situation

·         Nineteen (19) identified gangs in Bermuda , the majority of which are not involved in the current spate of violence.  Approx. 350 members; ages range from 12 to 40 years of age. Most gangs in Bermuda are formed as neighborhood groups and are not operating as organized criminal enterprises.

·         The gangs involved in the current spate of gun crime share some characteristics and display similar behaviors to some gangs in the USA – particularly associated with Bloods and Crips. This has made the partnership with the FBI SSGU all the more important to provide BPS officers with the skills and knowledge to tackle the gangs more effectively.

·         The BPS is also currently working with the Bermuda Government to identify additional assistance from the US and the UK to provide additional resources and expertise.

·         Gang and anti-social behaviour problems in Bermuda are often specific to local neighbourhood hotspots and other venues – often where alcohol is available. Efforts by the police to partner with the community or to conduct police operations to address specific problem behaviours are generally well-supported by the public. Persistent neighbourhood problems that are not tackled by the police leads to frustration, a lack of support for the police and an increased fear of crime.

·         The PPO program presents a viable approach to tacking gang activity and other chronic crime problems in Bermuda. Such an approach fits within with the target management aspects of the BPS National Intelligence Model (NIM) and provides a strong bridge between the NIM and the community focused Problem Oriented Policing & Partnership (POPP) strategy.

·         Whilst the terms of reference for the implementation of ‘Operation Safer Streets’ highlight the inclusion of external partners, the current operation remains focused largely on the ‘Catch and Convict’ strand to direct the use of internal BPS partners and resources.

·         The PPO approach has the potential to work much better where the PPO is targeted by a number of agencies. This supports inter-agency partnerships and identifies an objective way of targeting repeat offenders that is proportionate in line with ECHR principles.

6.      A Suggestion for the Way Forward – a Bermuda Task Force on Gangs

The BPS is modifying its Gang Violence Reduction Strategy to include a common framework for enabling partners and communities to engage directly with each other. This joined up approach increases the effort to tackle a number of complex social and criminal issues to reduce gang related violence. The BPS will work with the Minister of Labour Home Affairs & Housing to explore opportunities to include as many government, private and community groups as possible to form this multi-agency approach. The strategy aims to:

·         Reduce gang crime and reoffending

·         Address overlaps and gaps in existing approaches used by all agencies, and identify solutions

·         Align the work of partners more effectively by expanding or improving on established partnerships

·         Tackle social exclusion of both offenders and their families

·         Include wider social agencies to increase the effort on targeted offenders

·         Improve public confidence in the criminal justice system.

There are three main areas of responsibility:

·         Targeting and Enforcement – Police led

·         Engagement and Empowerment – Government led

·         Community Advice and Support – Community led

Each agency has a role to play across a spectrum of operations and activities. The specific action plans of each agency will determined by the agency’s nature and/or mandate, and there are four main areas of activities:

·         Prevent:           Interventions to stop/prevent the criminal activity of gangs

·         Convict:           Bring to justice those who engage in or facilitate gang-related violence

·         Rehabilitate:    Providing offenders with  options to reform

·         Influence:        Developing personal and community resistance.

7.      The Police Action Plan

·         Disruption of criminal activity through selected targeted enforcement, including:

o        Intelligence led deployment of police resources

o        Visibly effective proactive and directed patrols in neighbourhood hotspots

o        Community engagement

o        Improved intelligence collection

o        Full use of legislated search powers to increase targeting efforts.

·         Partnerships:

o        Participate in Government, business and community partnerships that prevent or reduce offending, re-offending and antisocial behaviour

o        Support and participate in Restorative Justice initiatives including youth cautioning

·         Proactive enforcement towards gangs and Prolific Priority Offenders (PPOs):

o        Dedicated gang targeting team

o        Build criminal conspiracy cases against gangs to dismantle organisations

o        Maximise use of all lawful search powers

o        Operations targeting known offenders and locations

o        Denying criminals from the use of the roads to commit crime.

·         Provide a consistent response to serious crime and maximise all investigative opportunities:

o        Improve the quality of investigations and forensic evidence retrieval

·         Partnerships:

o        Build new opportunities to work with external partners and enhance existing relationships

o        Enhance public confidence in providing information and including organisations such as Crime Stoppers

o        Work with the Criminal Justice System to ensure appropriate legislation is in place.

·         BPS Support for efforts to provide offenders with options to reform:

o        Support and participation in Government and private anti gang initiatives

o        Increased multi-agency collaboration

o        Information sharing protocols

o        Monitoring of key persons in the community

·         Shaping and directing community perspectives to raise awareness and to work together to tackle gang violence:

o        BPS support for community initiatives and events that promote peace, reconciliation and conflict resolution

o        Consulting with community leaders by establishing Community Advisory Groups

o        Conducting public confidence surveys

o        Regular and factual external communications.