Commissioner of Police Michael A. DeSilva - The Bermuda Police Service acknowledges the findings in the independent report of the Police Complaints Authority. We accept the determination that police officers did not act negligently or with misconduct is an appropriate finding based on the evidence, much of which was seen and circulated in the public domain.

In terms of the views expressed about the mistakes made by senior police commanders, most of this was thoroughly covered in the NPoCC report earlier this year and therefore does not come as a surprise. In my statement in March in reply to the NPoCC report, I acknowledged the findings of the report and I accepted the ten recommendations it made. I took responsibility to correct the deficiencies that were identified in the areas of training, planning, command, communication, tactics, and stakeholder engagement. Much of the work has already been undertaken, and more training is being delivered later this year.

I also acknowledge that the events of 2nd December left some members of our community feeling angry about the action we took, and disconnected from the police. We continue to work to heal that wound by demonstrating that we have taken the lessons on board. We know that the ability of the police to do our job effectively relies on strong trust and support from the public. To that end, we have been working to strengthen that trust by doing things differently. We will continue to implement all the recommendations of the NPoCC report and we will do our part to manage protests appropriately in Bermuda.