U.K. firearms officers back out of move to Bermuda

Firearms officers from the U.K. will not come to Bermuda to help fight gang violence due to concerns about their contract.

The “vast majority” of officers backed out of the application process when they discovered they would have to resign from their home forces and lose pension benefits if they signed up for the five-year contract.

Police chiefs had hoped to bolster the force with a team of more than a dozen specially trained officers from the U.K.

Firepower

In April, Commissioner Michael DeSilva announced the officers would be on the streets by the end of May.

But they have not arrived — and there seems little chance of a major influx of firepower from the U.K. in the future.

Mr. DeSilva told the Bermuda Sun he still hopes a “smaller contingency” of firearms officers will join the force soon.

But he insisted the setback is not a crisis and said the number of firearms officers in the force had increased by about 25 per cent since Easter due to local officers being trained.

He added: “The recruitment process has not yielded the results we would have hoped for. The contract term of five years seems to have been unpalatable for British officers because of their pension requirements.

“The overwhelming majority of the officers backed out of the application process because they would have had to resign from their forces and would have forfeited their pensions in order to take on the five-year contract.

“We will still have a small contingency of firearms officers coming to Bermuda but they will not be able to arrive before late August.”

Mr. DeSilva told the Bermuda Sun the police force is in talks with the Ministry for Home Affairs about ways of improving the contract package offered to officers from overseas.

He said: “We are talking to the Ministry about how we can change the process and shorten the contract term to make it more attractive to serving police officers.

“Bringing in the extra firearms officers was about increasing our capacity and resiliency.

Trained

“We have an adequate number of firearms officers and they are well trained.

“The U.K. officers would not have turned the tide themselves.

“We were looking for more numbers so we would not stretch our limited numbers to the limit.

“We have added another 25 per cent to our firearm officers since Easter.

“It is not a crisis — but it would still have been nice to have their help.”