It is likely that Governor Sir John Vereker’s statements on the Police and crime when he helped to open the Southside Police Station on Monday were quite deliberate and were aimed at answering and defusing two separate problems.

One concerned the call in the wake of the “tsunami” in December by Public Safety Minister Sen. David Burch for the Governor to take more public responsibility for the Police, whose administration falls under his reserved powers.

The second concerned the revelation last week that the Premier’s Chief of Staff, Sen. Dwayne Caines, had passed on concerns about the management of the Department of Public Prosecutions to his fellow Senator, Attorney General Sen. Philip Perinchief, and had asked him to look into them.

On Monday, Sir John revealed that end of year crime statistics showed a decline in overall rates of violent crime and he also pledged that the Police would be brought up to their full staffing levels.

So far so good. Sir John rightly stated that no level of violent crime in Bermuda is acceptable, but this is a start. The difficulty, as ever, in a small community like Bermuda is that even one or two individuals can have a dramatic effect on crime statistics, violent or otherwise.

It only takes one housebreaker to be released from prison and to return to his “profession” to send those statistics soaring. So trends in crime need to be measured over more than a single quarter of the year, or even over more than a single year. Nonetheless, whenever crime statistics show a downward trend, it is to be welcomed.

Sir John also produced statistics that suggested that the DPP’s office was producing results. Not only are cases being disposed of more quickly — an achievement for which Director Vinette Graham Allen has been publicly praised previously — but Sir John also said that 80 percent of the cases brought to court resulted in conviction.

This may come as a surprise to many, because acquittals in high profile cases can colour perceptions, and there have been a few of those in the last 12 months, but it is a decent record, and it would be interesting to know how it compares to other jurisdictions.

Despite the praise, Mrs. Graham Allen has been something of a lightning road for criticism since she took over the office of Director of Public Prosecutions from former Acting Director Kulandra Ratneser, who himself criticised her for providing inadequate support in the Terrence Smith fraud trial. Former Crown counsel Sen. Caines weighed in last week, saying he had received complaints from his former colleagues, and sources claimed the DPP’s office had failed to recruit and retain young Bermudian prosecutors, noting there is not a single black Bermudian male in the department.

Sen. Caines must have been aware before he confirmed his actions that he ran the risk of being accused of sour grapes or that he was wielding undue influence from his new and powerful position. But it must be assumed that he was only acting in a spirit of goodwill and had the best interests of his former employer at heart.

Under the current set up, the DPP is appointed by and reports to the Governor while the Attorney General is the Government’s chief legal advisor and is a Cabinet Minister.

This arrangement, introduced by the Progressive Labour Party in 1998 when it took power, makes for an uncomfortable relationship between the two offices, and is it is unclear how much power the Attorney General can wield over the DPP. Indeed, giving the DPP independence from political interference was one of the reasons for the division of powers. Wisely, Sen. Perinchief referred all questions to the Governor, the Public Service Commission and the Bermuda Public Service Union, and that presumably means he is staying out of this fight.

But it is hard not to have some sympathy with Mrs. Graham-Allen, because hiring and keeping local lawyers in Bermuda’s superheated job market cannot be easy. The same challenges present themselves in the hiring and retention of judges and magistrates when the best lawyers can earn more in the private sector and avoid the scrutiny that public officers must contend with.

Nonetheless, if there are concerns about the management of the office, it would not hurt for Sir John to have a consultant, preferably one with experience in prosecutions and the courts, look at the situation and see if the management of this important office can be improved.