Deputy Police Commissioner George Jackson is to travel to the UK next week in search of new officers for Bermuda.

He will be leaving accompanied by four other officers, and together they will be interviewing and testing a number of officers from around Britain with the hope of finding ten suitable candidates. And Police spokesman Coleman Easton said once they returned to Bermuda, they had plans to travel to the Caribbean in search of an additional four officers.

The 14 extra overseas officers would bring the force up to its full quota of 45 new officers from overseas, which was passed by Cabinet last year.

About 20 of those officers arrived from the Caribbean last summer, and 11 arrived from the UK.

Mr. Easton said it was not yet known when the new batch of officers would be likely to arrive in Bermuda.

He said: "The Bermuda force is looking overseas for experienced officers. I think last year, we were asking for at least five years' experience. We are looking for ten officers from the UK, and four from the Caribbean, which would bring us up to our full overseas compliment. The recruitment of these officers has already been agreed by Cabinet.'' Bermuda Police has been forced to recruit overseas because of difficulties in getting enough Bermudian recruits to join the ranks.

A training course for new recruits had to be cancelled a few weeks ago because there were too few people to make it viable.

Another one has been re-scheduled for August of this year, and the force is continuing to aggressively search for new officers to help meet the yearly attrition rate, which averages between 30 and 36 officers. Yesterday, Police Commissioner Jonathan Smith said the problems in finding new staff were not unique to Bermuda Police.

He said with such a healthy economy on the Island, there were many job opportunities for people to choose from and Bermuda Police was just one organisation competing for staff.

But he said sometimes officers left the force when they reached their mid to late 20s after serving for five or six years because they wanted to improve their education. However, he said Bermuda Police offered a superb package for new recruits and he said with the aggressive recruitment campaign, he believed more and more Bermudians would join the ranks.

He said: "I believe we need to continue to do more to market the Police Service as a viable career choice, but at the same time recognise that the Police is not the career for everyone.

"The long-term trend is that the number of Bermudians in the service has risen and it continues to rise.''