Some of Bermuda's brightest young Police officers will be lost to the Island for intensive training abroad, the Commissioner said yesterday.

Mr. Colin Coxall was speaking to members of the Chamber of Commerce explaining his wide-ranging shake-up of the Service and enlisting their support for the changes.

He told his audience the Service had suffered from years of neglect and had lacked focus and strategy yet was faced with rising crime and rising drug-related crime.

There is a low level of officers on patrol and staff were affected by poor morale and high resignation levels, he told the Chamber.

Mr. Coxall is here for just three years in which time he is charged with turning the Service around and finding and grooming a Bermudian successor for his and the Deputy Commissioner's jobs.

He told the audience that it was unhealthy to have a person work all his life within one force, as isolated as Bermuda's, and be promoted to the top job.

Asked how he was going to rectify the situation, Mr. Coxall said: "We will have to sacrifice some of our bright young people and send them off to Britain.

"Some forces in Britain have offered to take some of my middle ranking people and take them in to do a job. They will do a job, they will not be handshaking, they will run a division,'' he said.

One officer has just returned from a fact-finding mission in Britain and a Superintendent is in the UK seeking information on setting up a new intelligence unit, used to collate information on crime.

It is also hoped that by restructuring the Service and making it "an exciting'' place to work, more graduates will be encouraged to join, raising standards even higher and allowing greater selectivity of recruits.

"The Police Service has been regarded as not the most fashionable thing to do if you are a graduate. The Police Service in the UK is the largest recruiter of graduates in the country.

"I am very keen to raise the profile of Policing so it becomes an exciting organisation to join and a good organisation to join.'' Mr. Coxall has also teamed up with various organisations such as Bermuda College and the Women's Resource Centre to get outside speakers to broaden the training routine for officers which at present is "mechanistic''.

The Commissioner reiterated his plans to get more officers onto the beat through the Parish Constable scheme and to try a new tack on fighting traffic offences.

He said he is in talks with the Transport Minister, the Hon. Wayne Furbert, to try and get cash to spend on high-tech equipment to catch speeders instead of dishing out mountains of tickets.

And he admitted that he was not going to be too popular among officers as he started implementing his Service strategy, putting officers back onto the beat and away from flying desks.

"The crunch is coming,'' said Mr. Coxall. "We are now implementing the strategy and there will be some pain for the Service. We have been moving officers who have had quite comfortable jobs for many years onto the Parish Constable scheme and crime prevention.'' Mr. Coxall added: "The Service has suffered from many years of neglect. The first instinct was a quick fix, but there is no quick fix for this organisation and everything I have talked about is long-term.''