the genuine aspirations of Bermudian talent in the Bermuda Police Service, a Shadow Minister claimed yesterday.

And Shadow Home Affairs Minister Alex Scott predicted that both present Commissioner Colin Coxall and his newly installed deputy Jean Jacques Lemay, will be asked to stay on past the end of their contracts.

Mr. Scott also said he feared the Police Service will soon begin to recruit officers from overseas because young, college-educated Bermudians will not choose the Service as a career.

Mr. Scott was reacting to comments made by British Foreign Office Police Inspector General Lionel Grundy, who left the Island this weekend after conducting a week-long review of changes that have taken place in the Police Service since his last visit in May, 1994.

Mr. Grundy, Inspector General for Dependent Territories Police forces, told reporters that Mr. Coxall's appointment as Commissioner has been justified and pointed to the strides he said the Bermuda Police Service had made under Mr.

Coxall's leadership.

But Mr. Grundy could not give a time when he believed a Bermudian would take over the top posts in the Service.

He said: "I have no doubt that at some time in the future it will be the case that someone will take over. Whether it is 15 months, 18 months or three years I do not know.'' Yesterday, Mr. Scott said there has not been any genuine attempt made to seek out and train Bermudians.

"Regretfully, Mr. Grundy's comments do not come as a surprise to us in the PLP or Bermudians who have followed the ebb and flow of the various moves in the Police Service,'' he charged.

"The biggest clue has been the time that it has taken to identify the Bermudian or Bermudians who will take over the helm of the Service. To this day none have been identified.'' Most telling, Mr. Scott said, was the decision of four senior officers to go to Government House to see Lord Waddington last year.

"That was the clearest indication that those officers who would have been the ones to take over in the immediate future were being passed over.'' Mr. Scott said that he went along with Opposition Leader Jennifer Smith and deputy leader Eugene Cox and met with Mr. Grundy the day he arrived.

"In that meeting it became clear to us that the so-called Coxall plan is really a public presentation of the main points of the Grundy confidential report.

Police jobs "It is clear that Mr. Coxall's Service Strategy does not originate with him.

It simply follows the outline that Mr. Grundy already laid out.

"We believe that is the real reason why the Grundy report was never made public because it contained (Grundy's) reservations about the hierarchy of the Bermuda Police Service.'' Moreover, Mr. Scott said, the PLP believed that Messrs. Grundy and Coxall were self-serving in their wholesale criticism of the Police Service.

He claimed it was a tactic really designed to justify the secondment of foreign officers to head the service.

And in the future, it will be used to keep them in Bermuda on extended contracts, he said.

"...Bermuda is becoming more and more dependent on foreign expertise instead of really preparing Bermudians to run their own Police Service,'' he said.

"We are moving back in time. For years, Bermudians were running the Police Service. I am not convinced it was in as bad a shape as Messrs. Grundy and Coxall have made it out to be.''