Direct threats were made to officers involved in policing the December 2 protest outside Parliament and so their identities must be kept secret, according to Michael DeSilva.

The Commissioner of Police said that was one reason an operational order for managing the demonstration had to be redacted before being made public under the Public Access to Information Act.

“I am aware that subsequent to the events of December 2, direct threats were made to police officers because of their involvement in policing the event,” Mr DeSilva wrote in a letter to The Royal Gazette about a Pati request made by this newspaper for the “op order”.

He added: “We are able to demonstrate that to release the identity and responsibilities of each officer appearing in the operational order would likely endanger their safety. Accordingly, I cannot find fault with the decision to redact this information from the order in accordance with the exemptions provided for in the [Pati] Act.”

Asked to provide further details of the threats, Mr DeSilva said through a Bermuda Police Service spokesman that he had no further comment.

On December 2, protesters prevented MPs from entering the House of Assembly to debate legislation on the airport redevelopment project, and police officers in riot helmets used pepper spray on the crowd, prompting critics to decry their actions as heavy-handed.

The operational order, a restricted document written in advance of the protest by the island’s most senior police commanders, was released under Pati in January, but the identity of its authors was not disclosed.

Blank spaces appeared in place of their signatures and they were referred to only as the Silver and Gold commanders.

Police information officer Inspector David Geraghty said the order was redacted because there were sections that, if released, could “endanger the physical or mental health or the safety of an individual”.

He said there were portions that could disclose policing methods and prejudice their effectiveness.

The Royal Gazette asked Mr DeSilva to conduct an internal review of Mr Geraghty’s response, as is the right of any Pati requester, and he wrote back on April 4, upholding the officer’s decision.

The commissioner wrote that he could not find fault with either of Mr Geraghty’s reasons for redacting information.

“It is apparent that there were pre-planned and organised actions that led to the protests on December 2, some of which were deemed to be unlawful and have [been] reported to the Director of Public Prosecutions for criminal prosecution,” he said.

Mr DeSilva continued, quoting from the Pati Act: “If information about our ‘methods or procedures for preventing, detecting, investigating or dealing with matters arising out of breaches or evasions of the law’ was to be revealed in greater detail, then that information would likely be used for future breaches of the law and would ‘prejudice, or could reasonably be expected to prejudice, the effectiveness of those methods or procedures’.”

As well as the operational order, The Royal Gazette requested any correspondence between the BPS and anyone outside the police regarding the decision to deploy officers in riot helmets to the scene, before the decision being enacted, and any correspondence dated December 2, 2016 between the BPS and the Speaker of the House.

Mr Geraghty said no such records were held; Mr DeSilva confirmed that was the case. The December 2 protest led to 26 complaints about police behaviour being referred to the independent Police Complaints Authority, which has yet to reveal its findings.

There were 14 complaints of assaults on officers and 15 people have since been charged in court with various criminal offences alleged to have been committed on the day.

A death threat against Michael Dunkley, the Premier, was posted on Instagram on December 3 and later removed, prompting police to launch an investigation.

On December 7, The Royal Gazette asked the BPS if any officers involved in the protest had been flown off the island for safety reasons — the response was no.

A recently released review of the police’s response to the December 2 protest, written by a British officer from the National Police Co-ordination Centre, concluded that officers were not adequately trained and that the tactics adopted were doomed to fail.

Mr DeSilva said last month that he would not resign in light of the critical peer review.