. : My past life..

I just had to contact the Bermuda Police Service in regards to some personal information and this page brought back so many memories of my service there from 1970 – 1980.

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Bermuda Police Service

Coverage

Bermuda Police Service area

Area
Bermuda

Size
53.3 km²

Population
Approx 66,000

Operations

Formed
1879

HQ
Hamilton

Budget
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Officers
450

Divisions

Stations
3

Commissioner
George Jackson

Website
Bermuda Police

Hamilton Police Constable Thomas Joseph Powell. ca. 1890.

The Bermuda Police Service was created in 1879. Bermuda's first police, from settlement, until then, had been nine Parish constables (one for each Parish). These positions were filled by men appointed for twelve months, unpaid service, until pay was introduced in the 19th Century. These appointments were compulsory, akin to jury duty. Dissatisfaction with the quality of this part-time Constabulary led to the formation of the Bermuda Police Force under the Police Establishment Act, 1879. The new body consisted of ten full time constables under Superintendent J. C. B. Clarke. Three of the constables were based in Hamilton, with Clarke, three in St. George's, with Chief Constable H. Dunkley, and two in Somerset, and there were still twenty-one part-time Parish constables. The size of the police force was trebled in 1901. The first Detective was appointed in 1919, and the Force underwent another reorganisation in 1920, with eighteen constables recruited from the UK raising its strength to forty-six. The size of the force grew steadily over the following decades. The Bermuda Reserve Constabulary was created in 1951. With the closure of the HM Dockyard, and the attendant military garrison, in 1958, Police Headquarters, and other elements relocated to Prospect Camp, the former military heaquarters. A Womans' Department was established in 1961 with the first five female police officers. A marine section was formed in 1962. The Bermuda Police found itself performing a new role in the 1960s, Internal Security, as it dealt with riots resulting from the battle for racial equality. This culminated with the riots of 1977. These riots resulted from the death sentences handed down to two men accused of five murders, including those of Governor Richard Sharples, his ADC, Captain Hugh Sayers, and the Commissioner of Police, George Duckett. While remaining on the law books, the death penalty had not been used in Bermuda for three decades. As

Hamilton Police Station.

the two men convicted were both Black, many Blacks saw the sentences as racially motivated.

In 1995, the Bermuda Police Force was re-named the Bermuda Police Service. It was thought that the word 'force' had unsavoury connotations. The Reserve Constabulary was renamed the Bermuda Reserve Police^[1] and adopted the same uniform as the full-time Police officers. This was meant to address the common misconception they had suffered from, which was that they were not 'real' police officers.

Also in 1995, the withdrawal of the US Navy from Bermuda left the Bermuda Government responsible for policing the entirety of what was now the Bermuda International Airport. Unfortunately, Bermuda was still feeling the effects of the recession of the early 1990s, and this had led to a reduction in the manpower of the Bermuda Police Service. At the same time, the new Police Commissioner, Colin Coxall [1], was determined to modernise the Bermuda Police Service by returning it to its roots [2]. It was felt that the service had lost familiarity with the community it was policing, with constables waiting in police stations to react to situations, rather than walking the beat, anticipating, and preventing them. As the Bermuda Police Service attempted to redirect its efforts to more traditional 'community policing', which required a greater manpower, it found itself short of constabulary. Many non-policing roles within the service were reassigned to civilians in order to place more police officers on the street, but it was ultimately decided to withdraw most of the detachment from the airport in order to make-up the shortfall elsewhere. Policing of the airfield, which had previously been split between the US Navy and the Bermuda Police, was divided between the new Airport Security Police (a privatised police force operating under the Department of Air Transport), on the airside, and the Bermuda Police Service, which maintained a small detachment at its Airport Police Station, supplied from the complement of the St. George's Police Station, on the landside. That part of the former US Naval Air Station Bermuda which was not required for the operation of the airfield was fenced off and patrolled, til final decisions on the disposal of the land were made, by the Baselands Security. This was a unit of security guards recruited, trained, and operated by the Bermuda Police Service, which wore Bermuda Police uniforms, drove Bermuda Police cars, but whose personnel were civilians, without police powers.

Today, the Police Service continues to operate from the three police stations in Hamilton, St. George's, and Somerset, and the Headquarters at Prospect Camp, and a small Marine Police Station on Barr's Bay, in Hamilton. Following the closure of the US Naval Air Station in Bermuda, the Scenes Of Crimes officers have moved to a building there.

The current strength of the Service is 450 full-time officers, supported by 100 reserve officers.