Michael DeSilva said he would not step down after the release of a critical peer review of police procedures surrounding the protest on December 2.

The Commissioner of Police made the statement at a press conference yesterday afternoon.

The review, by Assistant Chief Constable Chris Shead of the National Police Co-ordination Centre in Britain, which looked at the protest that took place outside the House of Assembly nearly four months ago, was released by Governor John Rankin.

The review is separate from two other active investigations: one examining allegations of criminal conduct by protesters, the other into complaints brought against police officers.

Asked whether he would resign after the release of the report, which questioned police action on the day of the protest, Mr DeSilva said he would not.

“I don’t think that’s warranted, quite frankly,” he said.

Among the three key findings of the report was that officers were “not adequately trained” to deal with the “unexperienced levels of determination” and that the tactics adopted were doomed to fail.

According to Mr DeSilva, a focus on policing guns and gangs in recent years led to officers being unequipped to deal with the type of protest they encountered.

“The BPS focused its limited training resources towards firearms command, forensic capability and the investigation of serious crime,” the commissioner said.

“This has created a gap in our public order training that we clearly recognise and we are moving swiftly to close.”

A lack of similar recent protests is also partially to blame for officers being unprepared, he said.

“We haven’t had protests of that scale, where any confrontation has been an issue,” the commissioner said.

“We’ve had large-scale protests, but that’s been a case of managing people, and traffic, and making sure that they don’t trip over each other.”

The use of a “bubble tactic” — usually intended to protect the movement of a person through a crowd — employed by police to gain access to the House of Assembly, was “always likely to be unsuccessful” and “futile”, the report found.

Mr DeSilva admitted the tactic was “not effective”.

In its other two key findings, the report said that police operations “needed to have commenced earlier and been better informed”, and that “appropriate protester and stakeholder engagement strategies need to be adopted by the BPS for all issues that may potentially result in protest.”

The use of pepper spray by officers — touched on only briefly within the executive summary of the report — was not indiscriminate, Mr DeSilva said.

“Those officers that felt threatened by protesters used pepper spray to defend themselves,” he said.

The escalation that led to the deployment of the spray, he said, was in part because of police expecting “compliance” from protesters.

“That was our experience in the past, and we did not expect that protesters would continue to block the gates,” he said.

“We actually thought they would remove themselves from the gate, and while the protest would have taken place, we did expect that they would open the gates and allow the Members of Parliament access.”

A “swift mechanism” was also not in place to allow actionable intelligence received late on the night before the protest to be put in place, the commissioner said.

In a statement released yesterday, Senator Jeff Baron, the Minister of National Security, said the report formed an “important benchmark” for finding the balance between the right to peacefully protest and the need for police to maintain safety and order.

“Where recommendations relate to amending or drafting legislation, I look forward to discussing those with the commissioner and in Cabinet,” Mr Baron said.

“Clearly, there are lessons to be learnt and I endorse the overarching theme of the review: that its findings ‘should be viewed as an opportunity to develop enhanced capability and capacity within the Bermuda Police Service’.”

Mr DeSilva said the report did not get anything wrong.

“It’s a fair reflection of what we did and why we did it,” he said. “It’s perfectly acceptable recommendations of what we need to do differently next time.”