Hundreds turned out for a town hall meeting on gang and gun violence in Hamilton last night that swiftly became standing-room only.

Attendees heard a frank assessment of the increasingly refined methods used by gangs in targeting others, along with a change in young people’s attitudes towards violence.

It came as Andrew Murdoch, the Governor, Michael Weeks, the Minister of National Security, and Darrin Simons, the Commissioner of Police, addressed a full house at St Paul AME Church’s Centennial Hall.

The town hall in Hamilton comes after the double murder of Nakai Robinson and Natrae Eversley at the junction of Court Street and Dundonald Street on August 12 and the fatal shooting of Janae Minors in the same area a month later.

The meeting was held while David Burt, the Premier and Minister of Finance, was in Europe representing the island at a series of meetings.

Mr Murdoch opened with some observations from his first nine months in office, including a stark view that the island’s police service was “too small” and was thus under an assessment to better take on the problems at hand.

He added: “Incidents over the last few months are completely shocking but, as you will hear from the commissioner, this is not a new problem. That might be troubling, but it’s true.”

Mr Murdoch said it was imperative to improve “communicating and trusting the police”, so that officers could protect the community and prosecutors could secure justice.

He told the gathering: “I’m very interested in your ideas in terms of how you share what you know with those in authority so that they can take an appropriate response.”

Mr Weeks got applause as he said: “It warms my heart to see such a full house tonight.

“This hopefully is the start of more interaction, more communication and more solutions.”

He added: “We have to know what our children are doing. Police are not going to do it for you. It starts in the home — we must know what our children are doing.”

Mr Simons began his remarks by highlighting a photograph of missing Ja’Dore Wilson, 15, who was last seen on September 17.

He admitted that police had not received the level of feedback that it was hoped the community would provide for the search.

Mr Simons described Operation Sentinel as a “targeted effort around gang members” by police.

He said stop-and-search tactics had yielded 108 arrests since September 16, adding that search warrants in the past week had netted two firearms and resulted in an arrest in connection with guns, as well as seizures of cash and drugs.

While Mr Simons acknowledged that police numbers were down, he said “arrests for bladed articles are on the significant increase” and that police had seen promise with covert surveillance options.

He alluded to a “boots on the ground” option discussed with his colleagues overseas so that “we can very quickly raise our numbers”.

Mr Simons said the CCTV network now had 136 sites operational, yielding 460 “views”, and added that of the 384 requests for footage received so far this year, police had dealt with about 340.

The audience heard there were 12 devices with licence plate recognition in operation, expected to rise to 19.

Mr Simons added: “The camera systems are really coming online to be a key enabler in the fight against crime and bringing offenders to justice.”

However, the commissioner described gang networks of increasing sophistication on the island, with “new individuals who have risen up and taken on this behaviour”.

He warned that perpetrators are “getting better” at committing firearms offences than in the past.

Mr Simons explained: “In the beginning, 2010 let’s say, we know that individuals would say ‘tool up team, let’s go for a ride’, they would go and look to find somebody.

“That’s not the space we’re in today, the space we are in today is they are learning and co-ordinating what they’re doing.”

Mr Simons added: “They know where [their targets] are at a particular time and they are gathering that information to make sure they are not wasting their efforts.”

He said: “That is a reality of the evolution of this situation.”

The police commissioner urged members of the community to minimise factors that would lead young people to gangs.

Mr Simons explained: “We’ve arrested 16-year-olds for murder, two years ago they were 14, two years beyond that, they were 12 ... fortunately it’s a small handful, but what can we do to change conditions or make conditions better so less of that is coming through?”

He highlighted how some firearms have been used in multiple crimes and police traced one used on Court Street to 13 previous incidents.

Mr Simons also noted that more than 100 stabbings — resulting in ten deaths and 107 injuries — had happened since 2021, and warned that the number of fatalities would be much higher without modern medicine.

Mr Simons’s remarks were followed by questions and comments from those in attendance, including Gina Spence-Virgil, the founder and chief executive of the Gina Spence Programme.

Ms Spence-Virgil, whose son-in-law, James Lawes, was fatally shot in 2010, urged attendees to remember the 112 children who lost parents to gun violence in Bermuda, whom GSP supports through the Champions Programme.

She said: “We can all point fingers, we can all blame, but if we didn’t have a police department, what would Bermuda really look like?

“When I first started the Champions Programme, there was no such thing as a Minister of National Security.”

She added: “If we are going to call this thing what it is, we have to call it; we cannot counsel our children generically, because it’s homicide that they’re dealing with.”

Ms Spence-Virgil suggested grief be one of the pillars of the National Violence Reduction Strategy.

• Video courtesy of the Government of Bermuda