Bermuda's Police Service is to beef up its intelligence unit in a bid to nip crime in the bud.

A UK expert in the gathering and analysing of criminal intelligence has spent the last week sharing his experience with senior officers in the force.

Brian Flood, a former Detective Chief Superintendent with the Kent Constabulary, now heads the UK's National Criminal Intelligence Service.

He was invited to give a series of presentations to Police on the Island by Commissioner Jean Jacques Lemay following his recent trip to the UK.

"Commissioner Lemay has an ongoing programme of modernisation of the Bermuda Police Service and he asked me to talk to senior officers about the development of the service's capability in intelligence and information management,'' Mr. Flood said.

"Information management is about being able to paint a picture of what types of crime are going on in your jurisdiction and then developing a strategy on how to deal with that.

"I have talked about how you can improve your intelligence gathering, how you analyse that intelligence and how you deploy your resources based on that better information. Getting accurate information can help you in four key ways -- by targeting active criminals, managing crime hotspots, identifying related crime patterns and deciding where best to invest in crime prevention techniques.

"These four areas can make a very big difference in reducing crime rather than waiting for it to happen.

"The situation in Bermuda is similar to a lot of towns in the UK. But you have a fairly small community and that can present you with some considerations -- it makes it difficult to ensure that confidences are respected when everyone knows everybody else.

"But if you have good information that someone is committing crimes then you can get on to them before they go out and commit another 50 crimes. If you can see that crime is beginning to spiral in a certain area then you can move in before it gets out of control.'' Mr. Flood welcomed the Bermuda Police Service's plan to seek expert advice from other jurisdictions and praised Police officers for being open minded and open to new ideas.

"I hope my experiences have been of some use to them,'' he said.

"The world is changing all the time and the Bermudian officers have a great interest in their own profession and what developments are going on elsewhere in the world.'' Commissioner Lemay said Mr. Flood's input would be invaluable in restructuring the Service's intelligence unit.

"I was looking at how Police Services structured themselves in the area of intelligence with a view to looking at the set up in Bermuda and seeing how we can improve on the collection and analyses of intelligence and information,'' he said.

"We had a detailed presentation from Mr. Flood about what sort of things work in the UK and what things don't work so well.

"It's an ongoing process of change and we're looking at the best aspects of policing in other jurisdictions. We are looking at the way we structure ourselves. What is going to happen is that the dialogue between the various Police departments in the collection of intelligence will continue but if that information is not being analysed properly all you are doing is putting information into a computer. We are looking at the analytical side of things and the objective is to reduce crime by identifying crime before it happens.''