The passage of new Police legislation in the House of Assembly on Friday should go some way to helping the Service to detect crimes and to achieve convictions.

But it begs the question of whether it will be sufficient to restore confidence in the Police and the prosecution to prevent and to detect crime.

Much of what was passed on Friday stemmed directly from the Serious Crime Commission's recommendations three years ago and no matter how welcome, it is disappointing that it has taken so long to come into effect.

One cannot help wondering what crimes might have been solved, and convictions achieved, if the Police had had the ability to collect "non-intimate" samples, which include saliva, body surface and covering samples, without the suspect's permission, for DNA analysis.

It is also worrying that the Police do not have the ability to collect blood and other intimate samples without the suspect's permission.

Have we not reached the point where, assuming the Police have reasonable grounds to suspect someone, that they can demand the person's blood it it would solve the crime - or clear the person?

The Government has argued that it would be wrong to rush to put legislation into place, only to regret it later. And it can also be argued that it is better to have this legislation late rather than not at all.

But the Government does open itself up to the accusation that it is "soft on crime" in these kinds of situations.

That is only exacerbated when Attorney General Dame Lois Browne Evans prefers to recall the undoubtedly unjust times of the 1950s as justification for doing little now.

Nor is it helped when backbencher Arthur Hodgson prefers to blame the failures of the past on non-Bermudians and a "colonial" mentality.

The message that is sent to the community is that as long as the past is not repeated, all must be right in the present.

But the feelings the community is passing onto this newspaper is quite different. The most common complaints deal with the public's inability to either get a Police officer to come to the scene of the crime or to investigate it once they get there.

This newspaper continually receives complaints from members of the public on this problem and they are echoed by organisations like the Corporation of St. George's on its frustrations over the policing of the town.

Home Affairs Minister Terry Lister has stated that the legislation passed on Friday is not the whole solution to crime, and he is right.

The other piece of the puzzle is restoring the confidence of the vast majority of the public who are law-abiding and peaceful that they are safe in their homes and on the streets as they go about their daily lives.