yesterday quizzed Police Commissioner Colin Coxall on why experienced officers failed to stick to the Service's rule book.

Counsel Kim White said a Sergeant and an experienced Detective constable had been aware of Force Standing Instructions (FSI) -- but had apparently ignored them while preparing a case against then-drugs accused Ellsworth Wilson in February.

And he said that begged the question of standards of training within the Force.

Mr. Coxall replied: "You are opening up a wider question now of the overall training of the Bermuda Police Service -- which was a problem.

"We have, since I have been Commissioner, put an enormous effort into the retraining and re-engineering of the Bermuda Police Service.'' He added that a skills analysis of middle-ranking and senior officers conducted by him shortly after taking over the Service hot seat more than two years ago threw up "some skills problems''.

But he said: "I therefore put a strategy together indicating that a huge backlog of training had to be undertaken. Certainly training was not at a high level and not a high priority.'' And he added that around ten to 11 percent of officers were undergoing training at any one time -- double the level to be expected in a UK or European force -- while 90 percent of officers had some extra training last year.

"It's a calculated decision on my part to maximise training in a bid to catch up,'' he said.

Commissioner Lionel Grundy, the British Foreign Office's Inspector of Dependent Territories Police Forces, said there had been evidence the narcotics department treated the gathering and handling of evidence differently from other departments.

But Mr. Coxall said narcotics was "only a part of the normal criminal process...maintaining the probity of evidence should be paramount.'' And he told the Commission that the FSI were available to all officers and civilian staff -- in bound form and in printouts through the Police computer system.

He added: "They are in a constant state of transition as there have been constant changes. We have a further draft copy incorporating many of these changes.'' And Mr. Coxall said a Chief Inspector in charge of updating the FSI was now backed up by an Inspector to speed up the process.

Mr. White quoted evidence from officers that alleged exhibits in the Wilson case had not been marked or bagged or logged in and out of secure lock-ups issued to sergeants in the drugs squad -- and that they had not been properly registered until the next day.

Officers may be `cutting corners' He added: "There was simply no way that officers who seized that bag could ever have given credible evidence that bag and its contents were the bag and contents he seized.'' But Mr. Coxall told him that a senior officer was now investigating management practices in the department -- and that the lock-ups now had a register logging what was secured, who handed it over and to whom.

Commission chairman Telford Georges told Mr. Coxall that lawyers had given evidence that the narcotics department seemed to be suspected of "cutting corners'' and that there appeared to be little faith in the Police and particularly the drugs squad.

Mr. Coxall said: "That's very worrying if that's the case. That does concern me. It concerns me on another front -- it concerns me that Police officers will take shortcuts if they have no faith in the judicial process....it's called `noble cause'.'' And he warned the Commission that the more effective the service became through better training and better technology, the more strain would be placed on the courts and prisons.

Mr. Coxall added some cases already took more than two years to get to court -- compared to the English standard of six months -- and insisted too many adjournments were granted "without good reason''.

And he said existing courtrooms were out of date and failed to adequately separate jurors, accused and their families and called for an extra courtroom for Supreme Court. He added lawyers were sometimes not available or adequately briefed, and "inexperienced'' prosecutors worsened the problem.

He said a further stress to juries was that, because of the size of the Island, they might already have difficulty in maintaining their impartiality.

And he said the 1995 acquittal rate of 60 percent in cases of not guilty pleas in Supreme Court was worrying and that juries had acquitted "against the facts of the evidence'' in some cases.

Earlier, Mr. Coxall told the Commission that modernising the Service was stalled by delays in construction work and hold-ups in drafting new legislation.

And he admitted much needed to be done in the training area to bring officers up to speed on the latest police techniques.

Mr. White told Mr. Coxall of evidence from officers in the narcotics department that their offices -- originally allocated to eight men in the 1960s -- now held 26 and were overcrowded, unhealthy and sub-standard.

Mr. Coxall said there were plans to "enlarge and improve'' accommodation for plainclothes units, including narcotics and CID branches.

But modernisation work was to be carried out by Government's Works and Engineering department -- and that it had its own priorities and work, which he had hoped would have begun last summer, had not yet started.

But he said a pilot scheme to tape interviews with suspects awaited new legislation -- as did legislation guaranteeing the civil liberties of suspects along the lines of English legislation was also stalled in the queue to get to Parliamentary draftsmen.