Police Commissioner Jonathan Smith last night promised to continue the campaign to make arrests for the remaining 6,000 outstanding warrants - and said the Attorney General's Chambers had assured him officers were acting within the law.

The Commissioner said since a warrant team had been activated a few weeks ago, more than 900 warrants had been wiped off the wanted list, resulting in fines worth thousands of dollars being paid.

And he said the team, in compliance with various pieces of legislation, including The Motor Car Act, The Road Traffic Act, The Misuse of Drugs Act and the Auxiliary Bicycles Act, would continue to set up road blocks to check that licences and vehicles were in order.

During that process, he said, people found to have outstanding warrants would be arrested and brought back before the court.

Mr. Smith spoke out after defence lawyer Larry Mussenden accused the Police of acting outside of the Constitution and of "trampling" on people's rights to move freely by setting up random stops and road blocks.

He said he was appalled that Police were unjustly stopping people without having "reasonable grounds".

However, yesterday, Mr. Smith said Bermuda Police had done nothing wrong. As of yesterday he said there were 6,177 warrants outstanding, and noted the courts were issuing up to 200 warrants every week.

And he intended to get as many of the warrants as possible cleared up, he said. And if that meant targeting named individuals at home or at work, then his officers would do it.

Mr. Smith said: "Our warrant team that was put together specifically to tackle this issue is still in place, is still making arrests and are still dealing with what I believe is an unacceptable amount of warrants for a jurisdiction of this size. Twenty years ago the number was consistently below 1,000.

"The thrust of the claim (by Mr. Mussenden) for it being unconstitutional was, as I understand it, that Police were conducting random stops for the purpose of checking for warrants only.

"I can move directly to how our officers are trained and how they are instructed, and the advice from the Attorney General's Chambers. The advice from the Attorney General's chambers is that they must be some authority in law to stop an individual. I fully accept that.

"Within the law, we can randomly stop vehicles for licence checks. We are within our rights to stop people on the road if we have authority under an existing piece of legislation, or we stop an individual because we know that in that motorcar or on that motorbike is a person for whom a warrant is in existence.

"The advice we have received from the Attorney General's Chambers has been shared with the superintendent (operating the warrant team).

"The warrant team is still in place and is still working five days out of seven."

Mr. Smith said the team had been joining up with officers conducting speed checks around various parts of the Island. In those cases, where people had been stopped for speeding, they have also automatically undergone a warrant check. If a warrant was outstanding for their arrest, they will have been arrested.

If the warrant was issued because a previous fine had not been paid, they would have been given an opportunity to immediately pay it, via the Police, without returning to court. If they don't have the means to pay it, they must return to court.

And if warrants were issued because somebody failed to answer a summons to attend court, they would be held in Police custody and put before the court at the first available opportunity.

But the Commissioner said he would much prefer it if people found out for themselves whether or not warrants had been issued against them, and then simply paid the outstanding fine or went back to court on their own volition, instead of waiting until they were arrested.

Besides the volume of work involved, he said the Police did not have cell capacity to be rounding up dozens of people every day.

He added: "The answer, I think, is for us is to try and be consistent with the message and that is to encourage people to comply with the court order.

"We have reminded people that if they suspect they have a warrant out against them to call and find out if they are on the warrant list. They can resolve any issue they have before Police get involved."

The Commissioner yesterday instructed the warrant team to carry out a thorough audit of the warrants list to find out who was no longer alive, or may be no longer living in Bermuda because they had since gone overseas and had no connection to the Island.

And he said he also suspected warrants would have been issued for fictitious people, where people had given false details to Police.

Coupled with the fact that many people will have more than one warrant out for their arrest, he said he suspected that the audit would show that there was much fewer than 6,177 different people on the warrant list.

But last night Mr. Mussenden said he stood by his earlier comments.

He said: "There is no legislation that allows them to have a road block for the purpose of checking warrants. These practices of stopping masses of people to search their warrant lists, and their use of The Motor Car Act in this way, is a breach in itself.

"My view is that they need to take their list of 7,000 warrants and go to look for these people. Are they saying that for $4 million worth of outstanding fines, we are going to breach people's constitutional rights?

"The court system needs to examine the reasons why they are issuing up to 200 warrants a week. They need to look at the bigger picture and need to devise a method whereby they are not abusing people's rights as individuals."

Anyone wishing to see if a warrant is out against them should call Hamilton Police station on 299-4500.