One of the commissioners probing the handling of serious crime in Bermuda revealed he had grave concerns about the number of vacancies in the senior Police ranks.

Former British Deputy Chief Constable Don Dovaston, who has been drafted in along with two other commissioners to study the prevention and detection of crime, said he feared the vacancies would lead to a lack of leadership and direction among the force.

At Friday afternoon's hearing of The Commission of Inquiry into serious crime, Mr. Dovaston spoke out while Acting Assistant Police Commissioner Victor Richmond was testifying.

Mr. Dovaston said: "One thing that has troubled me is when you addressed the commission you said you were acting assistant commissioner, but you were also carrying responsibility for the special criminal investigations department.

"The thing I'm alluding to is it appears that the commissioner (Jean-Jacques Lemay) is the only substantive senior post in the force at the moment.

"There is an acting deputy, acting assistant, and a series of acting officers in senior roles.

"Is this a good state of affairs -- to have an amount of senior police officers in acting roles -- not only acting, but rotating acting, too? "One has got to say that in terms of running a force, it doesn't bode well.

Is there a resolution to this?'' Mr. Richmond at first suggested that the only person who could answer the question was Mr. Lemay himself.

But when pressed as to what he personally thought, he answered "no'', it was not a good state of affairs to have so many high ranking officers in acting roles and it did not bode well.

Earlier in his evidence, Mr. Richmond said a lack of resources in the Service, both in officers and terms of equipment, meant that sometimes staff had to be shuffled about as incidents occurred.

Much of the forensic expertise used by the Police, he said, had to come from overseas.

He said at the time Canadian teenager Rebecca Middleton was murdered in July, 1996, officers were particularly busy.

Mr. Richmond said that within three days there was also a shooting, when a man was murdered, and a parasailing accident in St. George's, where a man was killed.

Talking about the Service's difficulty in recruiting staff, and previous budget cuts in the early 1990s, which saw the number of posts slashed, he said with careful management, there were sufficient officers.

However, he said in July, 1996: "We were stretched, there's no doubt about it.

"We were stretched -- resources weren't sufficient to deal with everything that the major incident room had to deal with at that time.'' Chairman of the commission, Justice Stanley Moore asked him if officers were thrust into situations they were not used to dealing with.

Mr. Richmond responded: "I accept that on occasion mistakes may be made due to stress and long hours and perhaps deficiency in resources, but when I say we were stretched at that time, I was more meaning stretched with regard to resources, that is officers' vehicles and that type of thing.'' He admitted that the Service did not have the same number of experienced detectives as it did, but denied that the Middleton investigation team was lacking.

He added: "I'm not saying that we did not have sufficient resources and experienced officers to conduct both of these investigations properly and successfully, and I believe we did.'' MURDER MUR CRIME CRM