The Commissioner of Police, Michael DeSilva, has hinted that further redundancies will be made in the service in the coming months to meet budget targets.

Outlining the 2016 Police Strategy at a press conference yesterday, Mr DeSilva said he had informed a “number of officers in recent weeks” that their contracts would not be renewed.

He also revealed that of the ten redundancies announced in July only nine took effect, after the decision to not renew one officer’s contract was reversed.

“We don’t have an established number legislatively. We are below where we have been in the last few years,” Mr DeSilva said. “Right now we are 428 and before this financial year is over that number will reduce as well. I announced in July that we had not renewed the contracts of ten police officers. We reversed the decision on one of those officers so it became nine. In recent weeks I have informed a number of other contract officers that they will not be renewed.

“I won’t go into the details of that, there may be some issues that the officers are taking with that and I will let that work itself out. It is no secret that I have had to reduce the size of the organisation in order to meet those budget reduction targets.”

We did not receive a response from the Bermuda Police Association by the time the paper went to press.