New security patrol officers are expected to be out on the beat in the city before the end of the month.The City of Hamilton has joined forces with Security Associates Limited to combat the “new wave” of crime in Bermuda. Security Associates CEO Carlton Crockwell told city business and property owners that “crime has changed” and “we have to change to deal with it”.The security firm has recently been called on to provide a new line of services. “We have secretaries and administrators knocking off at night and they are scared. We get called in when they are ready to be picked up and we take them to the car park, another safety measure we have put in place,” said Mr Crockwell.“How many times have you heard the police say we cannot respond to regular alarms anymore because they don’t have the manpower,” he asked. “In the last six months, our firm responded to 50 alarms a month.“Last week alone during the day we were responding to at least ten residential alarms a week, security has changed. The police are busy and crime is different from what it was 30 years ago.”Mr Crockwell was addressing close to 30 business owners who attended a meeting on Monday evening held by the City of Hamilton to discuss security measures and problems associated with city vagrants.City Chief Operating Officer Ed Benevides said: “We hope to launch the new service on May 28.”And while the turnout was “not quite as much as anticipated”, Mr Benevides said: “The police have not been able, at a consistent level, to assign sufficient resources to address the issues raised by various individuals.“The courts have demonstrated they do not think they are the vehicle to address a social problem and continue to discharge individuals arrested for various offences like public drinking, begging, and being a public nuisance,” said Mr Benevides.When asked for the top five trouble spots by The Royal Gazette, Mr Benevides listed the City Hall car park, Par-la-Ville car park, Queen Elizabeth II Park, Point Pleasant Park and two parking lots on Front Street.“There are numerous locations around the city were persons are sleeping in doorways, on sidewalks. The additional challenge is not just the sleeping but the defecating which is evidenced all night even when public toilets are open,” he added.Mr Crockwell told the audience: “I believe the problem is major, I was walking down on Front Street and I couldn’t believe the extent of the problem.”One businessman whose office is located in the International Centre complained of “one man who is forever sleeping in the entrance to the building on Bermudiana Road”. “I find him there every morning habitually at 7am,” he said.“People in the building have a choice, either step over him or go all the way round to the other side of the building to enter on Par-la-Ville Road. It’s just totally obnoxious, and if the police can’t move him how do you expect to move him,” he asked.Mr Crockwell replied: “Our programme is called prevention, if we begin to observe his pattern, let’s say he gets there at 10am or 10pm at night we’re going to have people there waiting for him.“We’ve had this problem with the same man at another building. Don’t ask me how but he was getting into the building and sleeping at the bottom of the stairwell. The client called and asked how do we get rid of this problem, the problem is no longer there.“We had a problem at one of the major banks, we set things up and the problem is no longer there.”But another businessman took issue with “moving the problem” and said: “That’s just moving it from one place to somewhere else, with so many vagrants now on Reid Street, Queen Street and Front Street, I don’t know how you can be everywhere for the amount of people out there.”Mr Crockwell replied: “The problem will go somewhere, I don’t know where it’s going to go but our job is to move it out of the city, where it goes, it goes.“We made it work on Pitts Bay Road, we made it work at the Ferry Terminal and we believe it’s going to work in the city as well.“If in New York they can do it, I know in this small island we can do it, and they have much more crime than we have in Bermuda.”Mr Crockwell conceded there were “legal loopholes” in securing restraining orders to stop vagrants from “pestering customers”. The law requires a proper name and address for a summons, but in most cases the person being served with the order seldom has an address.Mr Benevides said: “This is a community issue, it is a multifaceted problem. The challenge has been to coordinate the efforts of the Bermuda Police Service with the Judiciary as well as the Ministries of Health, National Security, Public Works, Youth and Family Services, the Salvation Army and similar outreach groups.“The best chance of success is to coordinate the four Ministries with the agencies to provide a process that can best provide assistance where appropriate and needed but also detention if necessary.“This effort continues with the second meeting being held as soon as schedules allow, both Ministers Michael Weeks and Wayne Furbert have demonstrated efforts to find solutions. We have tried over the last four years to work on that, but it’s time to deal with the root cause,” said Mr Benevides.Mr Crockwell was hopeful the new security patrols will be up and running before the cruise ship season moves into high gear. “We plan to run it from Monday to Saturday, from 6am to 9.30pm. In the evening time it gets worse, restaurants have a major problem with vagrants; especially the ones that have outside dining on the roadside at night.”