In attendance: Commissioner of Police – Mr. Michael DeSilva; Commanding Officer of the Bermuda Regiment – Lt. Col. Brian Gonsalves & President, Somerset Cricket Club – Mr. Richard Scott. [Commissioner DeSilva & Mr. Scott are pictured right.]

Commissioner DeSilva: I have called this press conference to announce a number of operational initiatives that the Bermuda Police Service has put in place this year to ensure we have a highly visible presence, to provide an immediate response to public disorder, and to assure the public that all that can be done is being done to make our residents and visitors safe – and to make them feel safe – during this extended holiday weekend.

Cricket fans and others planning to attend the match no doubt have many questions about security at the grounds, particularly in light of the events that marred the close of the match last year in St George’s. We have been working closely with the management of Somerset Cricket Club to ensure that security is tight, and I will hand over shortly to the President of the Club, Mr. Richard Scott, to explain more about that.

Elsewhere around the Island, we are aware that a number of establishments are hosting parties and concerts from the East End to the West End, and I have taken steps to ensure we have more than enough police officers on the ground to deal with any issues, wherever they might arise.

Our Cup Match Operation comes into effect on Wednesday afternoon and runs 24/7 until Monday morning. There will be a Superintendent in charge at all times who is assisted by a Chief Inspector. More than 150 officers have been called to duty for the period and our numbers have been augmented by the Bermuda Reserve Police who, with the permission of the Governor, have been called in on a partial embodiment. We are also being assisted by soldiers of the Bermuda Regiment and the Colonel and I will explain more in a moment. The extra 150 staff are over and above the normal contingent of patrol officers and community action teams, and they too have had their shifts extended to 12 hours to increase our total coverage. As always, we have a full police firearms response capability 24 hours a day.

This year, we are introducing a new tool – we are working with a local security company that has placed CCTV cameras in two fixed positions so that we can monitor traffic flow and record vehicle numbers if we need to. The public should be assured that we have strict protocols in place for the use of these cameras, as we have had for many years with the cameras in the City of Hamilton. The video footage can only be used for the investigation of crime and there is a large threshold when it comes to balancing the rights of public privacy. In addition to the two fixed cameras, we also have the ability to place other mobile cameras in temporary positions as the need arises. This new tactic is a trial run to evaluate the effectiveness of CCTV networks outside the City and to establish whether this is something we wish to pursue in the longer term.

Bermuda Regiment

In terms of our staffing resources across the Service, I have reported publicly some of the changes I have made to our structure over the last few months. You will be aware that I have doubled the size of the Serious Crime Unit, which now has around 30 live investigations around serious cases. Since this time last year, we have also doubled the size of the Police Support Unit (PSU) which is our street level gang suppression team. The cost of these increases, however, has been the downsizing of other units. The Marine Unit was one such victim during the winter, which lost a number of staff. Now with the summer in full swing we are in need of more resources on the water.

I am pleased to announce that Colonel Gonsalves and I have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding between our services whereby the Marine Unit will now be supplemented by soldiers of the Bermuda Regiment’s Boat Troop. Soldiers and police officers will be on patrol together throughout the whole Cup Match weekend, and we will extend this initiative until the end of September at which time we will conduct a review of its effectiveness. The use of Bermuda Regiment in this way will allow us to put more police boats on patrol and for longer hours.

I am grateful to the Governor for approving the deployment of the Regiment, and I am particularly grateful to Minister Burch who has authorised the transfer of police funds to pay for the soldiers’ salaries. The total cost for this initiative is expected to be around $50,000.