stashed in containers and shipped abroad. Cycles and cycle frames have to go somewhere and it is hard to believe that the number stolen would not now be visible in the bushes or in the seas around us.

Finally something seems to be happening thanks to Colonial Insurance. The public response to the Colonial scheme indicates just how anxious people were for some action. Fed up with the large number of stolen cycle insurance claims, Colonial decided to take some action of its own. Colonial is looking for a "bounty hunter'' to track cycle thieves and is planning to pay rewards to anyone who confidentially turns in a cycle thief.

We are in total agreement that desperate situations require strong measures and we hope that other insurance companies will join with Colonial Insurance to stamp out this theft. The Police should have dealt with these thefts a long time ago but they did not do so and, as the number of thefts increased, their interest in cycles seemed to decrease. Call them to report a cycle theft and you practically received a yawn.

It is a sad day when companies and individuals have to become the law and we can only hope that after changes in the Police Service this kind of action will no longer be necessary. This must not be the beginning of vigilante justice in Bermuda.

We think it is important to remember that Assistant Police Commissioner Wayne Perinchief has been in charge of crime at Police Headquarters and that under him cycle thefts have simply ballooned. The inability of the Police to curb cycle thefts may well, of course, be one of the reasons that Mr. Perinchief is being released from the Police Service.

There will be some questions asked about Colonial's new system.

There is some risk that cycles could be stolen for the reward or that false reports of theft could be made in order to get the reward. That is always true with this kind of justice. The person hired by Colonial Insurance as a `bounty hunter' will have to be very careful to verify every claim.

Colonial has duplicated Crime Stoppers and Crime Stoppers already duplicates what the Police are supposed to be doing. It is fair to ask how many systems Bermuda will need. The very need for these systems says something important about how the Police Service has been run and justifies the restructuring which is now taking place. This should be clear even to those people in the Progressive Labour Party who first complained loudly about growing crime and now want to politicise the Police Service by opposing restructuring changes designed to deal with crime.