Police Commissioner Jean-Jacques Lemay told yesterday it was time for Bermuda to revert to grass roots policing.

He spoke of plans to reintroduce community officers and promote greater Police involvement with the public.

Mr. Lemay said his vision for the future of the Service revolved around three new strategies involving a greater use of technology, putting officers back on the beat and ensuring officers worked efficiently.

He added the "Community Beat Officers'' would be trained specifically for the job, including emphasis on problem solving, and would be in a better position to know their district and the people living in it.

"We will also be using technology and new forms of intelligence gathering and analysis to drive new programmes of crime management that will centre around crime prevention techniques and targeting of repeat and serial offenders.

"We are also looking inwards to improve ourselves through introducing new methods of measuring work performance through new appraisal systems, and we are revising our promotion systems at the same time in order to select and reward those most able to supervise and manage in the new way of doing business in the Bermuda Police Service.'' A fourth initiative, which directly involved the public, was also introduced by Mr. Lemay. He said Government would shortly be approving the establishment of consultative committees to assist the Police Service.

Their aim is to enable people to advise Police on issues of concern to them, which would ultimately be evaluated by a national consultative committee.

Mr. Lemay was speaking at a lunch held by Hamilton Rotary Club yesterday.

Time to return to grass roots policing, declares Lemay He appealed to the Rotarians to consider taking part in these committees to provide the business community input they needed to help build the best Police Service possible.

He said: "Policing is something you Rotarians all understand fully. It is a business with budgets to create and meet, labour to placate and try to get to work more effectively, and customers whose interests and expectations must be met.'' Mr. Lemay said: "I came to Bermuda in 1997 as your Deputy Commissioner of Police and was appointed Commissioner in 1998. I had the opportunity to evaluate the progress made under the previous administrations and identified what I feel are the essential components of the change process needed to make Bermuda Police Service the best it can be, and one of the leading law enforcement agencies in the world.

"I do believe Bermuda can be a role model for other Police jurisdictions in the Carribean, the UK, Canada and the USA.'' "As the CEO of the policing business in Bermuda I had a Core Functions Exercise carried out in the summer and autumn of 1999.

"This was an in-depth internal audit of all of the operational and business practices of the service. The core functions exercise took a while, and it revealed some things about policing in Bermuda that we liked, such as the fact that we were not doing badly in catching certain kinds of criminals.

"Unfortunately, the audit also revealed some things that we didn't like.

These were grouped mostly around the fact that we were not keeping up to the modern changes in policing that were occurring in other jurisdictions, and as a result were not getting the best out of our available resources, or using them in a way that gained greater effect from their integrated application to crime.'' Mr. Lemay explained how Police would serve the public in the years to come.

"In the future, what our customers want is freedom from crime, and more importantly, freedom from their fear of crime.

"If we are going to provide these new services to our customers, we needed to talk to our customers, we needed to talk to our employees about a different way of doing business and I had a core values exercise carried out.

"The core values exercise was followed by the development of new strategies for policing the community, in which community beat officers will be introduced, and for the use of technology and intelligence systems to predict and manage crime, rather than just reacting to crimes as they occur.

"The development of these strategies was driven by a new group of senior executives in the service who are dedicated to the new way of doing business.

"At the present time we are working to integrate the strategies of policing, both street policing and the management of crime, and are introducing the new human resource processes and instruments to improve human resource productivity.

"At the same time we are trying to sharpen our pencils to try to cope with capital expenditure requirements for the estate, operating expenditure requirements for labour, as well as new technology, and we are trying to introduce new planning systems at the lowest levels that will introduce greater efficiencies in how we use the budgets provided to us.'' Mr. Lemay revealed yesterday that he was waiting for experienced officers to join the service as Bermudian constables on the beat had only four years' experience on average.

He hoped that in August officers from the UK would arrive to swell the ranks of officers that recently arrived from St. Lucia and the Caribbean.

Mr. Lemay had been to the UK to conduct interviews of prospective officers but added they may be forced to recruit from Canada due to the difficulty of UK officers getting time off.

Mr. Lemay highlighted the results of the Police Service's efforts in tackling crime and said he would be remiss if he did not also acknowledge the excellent work done by Crime Stoppers of Bermuda.

He said: "Crime is down significantly for the second quarter of this year and major crimes are at a five-year low.'' Mr. Lemay attributed this to "the courage, commitment, dedication, common sense and compassion displayed by the men and women of the service, good teamwork and the excellent co-operation received from the general public.'' Jean-Jacques Lemay