Rising knife crime in Bermuda was being addressed through more stop-and-search efforts in recent months, the Assistant Commissioner of Police said this week.

Martin Weekes noted that the interception measure, also referred to as Section 315F of the Criminal Code Act, was likely the Bermuda Police Service’s most effective tool for fighting knife crime.

Police statistics show that the use of bladed weapons increased from four cases a year in 2018 and 2019, to 34 in 2024.

While there have been multiple stop-and-search efforts since 2018, the latest drive began towards the end of last year, Mr Weekes said.

He highlighted that there were 75 arrests for bladed weapons throughout the whole of 2024, and 72 so far this year, with close to four months still left in 2025.

“We have stepped things up in recent times,” he said. “Section 315F under the Criminal Code gives us the power to stop and search people in anticipation of violence.

“If we think there is going to be the possibility of violence — particularly if we have intelligence to suggest there may be violence at a particular party or football game or licensed premises — we can put these road checks in place.

“A big thing for us was the rise in knife crime. That really raised some huge red flags.

“We have noticed a big rise in people carrying knives, people using knives for violence and people getting quite badly stabbed.

“That is something that the stop-and-search can really focus on.

“I think they are working. Finding empirical evidence that proves that is a tough one but particularly around the carrying of guns and knives at big events, we can show that the stop checks lowered the opportunities to cause violence.

“The fact that we are on the road — often the only road to get to an event — means that people are put off.”

There have been 714 stops-and-searches in 2025, while last year there were just over 1,000.

Efforts were even more intense during a “bad period” from 2010 to 2013, Mr Weekes said.

“We were getting a shooting event of some kind around every ten days, so we really ramped up the response to that,” he explained.

“In 2025, we have just had a double shooting down on Court Street and that followed a shooting up at [Southampton] Rangers Club.

“We are not in 2011; we are in 2025, so the response is proportionate to what is going on.”

Two men were killed and a third was treated in hospital after a daylight shooting on Court Street last month.

Days earlier, a 19-year-old man was taken to hospital with a suspected leg injury after shots were fired at Southampton Rangers Sports Club.

Referring to police statistics, Mr Weekes said that the suspects in knife crimes were young Bermudian males, the majority aged between 14 and 29.

The victims were also young Bermudian males, with the majority aged between13 and 29, he added.

There has also been a trend of females carrying and using knives as a weapon, Mr Weekes said.

“We provide education through social and mainstream media,” he added.

“We remind parents, if your knives are going missing, perhaps you need to have a chat with your sons but we have had a fair few ladies carrying knives and even using them, which is new. We didn’t have a lot of that in the past.

“We go through cycles with this where everybody thinks they have got to carry a knife, particularly younger people.”

Mr Weekes reminded the public: “You are not allowed to carry a knife, not even for protection.”

The stops require no pre-notification, unlike sobriety road checks, which are subject to approval by the senior magistrate and published in the Official Gazette ahead of time.

Stop-and-search efforts have faced some criticism, including from antiracism charity Citizens Uprooting Racism in Bermuda, which said in 2018 that the operations were a “proven ineffective method of policing” that resulted in racial profiling.

Mr Weekes said the BPS policy meant that officers were deployed where they were needed.

He added: “We are trying desperately to be proportionate but we also have to go where the crime is. This is designed to make Bermuda safer.

“We are not getting a lot of pushback from the public on this. We are doing it in response to what the public are asking us to do.”

Mr Weekes said that while some other weapons were seized as a result of the measures — including small axes and ninja stars — they were not the focus of the searches.

The main target weapons were knives able to cause serious injury.

He said that, for the most part, other tactics were used for the seizure of firearms.

“The 315F is probably the most powerful thing that we have got to prevent people from carrying knives,” Mr Weekes added.

Asked when the BPS might reduce their stop-and-search efforts, he responded: “It is very much intelligence-led.

“When we start to hear that tensions have started to calm down, then we ramp it down.

“If we find we are not picking up anyone with a weapon or we are not getting any fights at parties or clubs, we ramp it down because it has to be proportionate.

“We are in a very heightened state right now.

“We know that tensions between gangs are very high, people are looking for retribution for the shootings that have occurred and it is our job to calm those tensions down by disrupting their opportunities to do that.”