The resources of Crime Stoppers Bermuda were rallied for an all-out campaign in 2025 as the island’s count of unsolved murders, virtually all attributable to firearms, hit discouraging new heights.

The year also came with heightened deterrence and prevention: police staffing increases, a weapons amnesty, an expansion of security CCTV in public areas and a police crackdown on violent crime using Operation Sentinel, which came with a surge in stop-and-search measures.

Police were frank with the public that their efforts could cause inconvenience to the community.

Darrin Simons, the police commissioner, was equally frank when he warned that gang members were improving their methods — and there were “new individuals who have risen up and taken on this behaviour”.

The high-profile Crime Stoppers rewards of up to $50,000 for confidentially shared information, announced in September, came in the wake of two public double murders that stunned an island weary from more than two decades of shootings and gun murders.

An anonymous donor backing the unprecedented reward said: “Silence helps the criminal — so speak up and help solve the violence that is destroying some families and keeping them hostage in their own homes.”

Those words had begun to fit reality for all too many of the island’s residents.

May 2025 began with an “indiscriminate” attack on Legends, a small neighbourhood sports bar in Somerset, by what appeared to be group of assailants caught on security camera footage.

The attack, which by most metrics qualified as a mass shooting — something Bermudians would typically associate with far larger countries — claimed two lives and left three others injured.

Jasmin Smith, 32, and Shaquan Williams, 29, were shot dead in the attack. It prompted outrage from the community.

Three months later, during an otherwise typical summer afternoon in Hamilton on August 12, a gunman on the back of a motorcycle opened fire on a group on the corner of Court Street and Dundonald Street.

Two men, Nakai Robinson, 18, and Natrae Eversley, 23, were murdered. A third man, 24, was treated in hospital for his wounds.

The attack came mere days after shots were brazenly fired outside the Southampton Rangers Sports Club. Police carrying out a licence check had left just minutes earlier. A 19-year-old was injured.

With the grim landmark of a second public double murder, the island wanted action.

Andrew Murdoch, the Governor, and David Burt, the Premier, convened Governor’s Council meetings to marshal resources against a particularly indifferent, public criminal whom Mr Burt branded “community terrorists” — a term some criticised and others supported.

The activist Gina Spence-Virgil spoke for many when she told The Royal Gazette: “What we see now isn’t just shootings. Bermuda has moved into the multiple shootings environment.”

Police highlighted rampant gang tensions, even as Operation Sentinel yielded arrests and seizures of drugs along with prohibited weapons.

In September, a gun attack on a Devon Spring Road residence in Devonshire left a man wounded.

However, a targeted killing, openly conducted in daylight, came on September 16 mere yards from the scene of the Court Street double murder and prompted renewed public disgust.

Janae Minors, 37, was fatally shot that afternoon when a gunman walked into her Dundonald Street shop, Beauty Monster, and opened fire.

Ms Minors was a mother of two, aged 16 and 18.

The police commissioner acknowledged the ripple of trauma across the community, with Mr Simons offering sympathy to the many left “frustrated, apprehensive and angry”.

Police and government officials accompanied by the Governor reacted with town hall meetings on violence in the community. Mr Murdoch told the Gazette that Britain had offered to fund the deployment of specialist equipment and law enforcement officers in Bermuda for a period of up to six months.

However, in late November, Mr Burt said while attending a Joint Ministerial Council of British Overseas Territories leaders in London that Britain needed to better understand the types of violent crime that Bermuda and others in the region were contending with.

Mr Burt said: “We are not dealing with European-style crime. We are dealing with American-style crime.”

He said Britain should do more to assist, pointing out that the island’s internal security was the responsibility of the British Government and Government House.

The year came with two high-profile Supreme Court trials for gun murder.

Kiari Tucker, whose trial for the 2017 fatal shooting of Marlon Steede began in January, dominated headlines up to his conviction the following month. He was dealt a life sentence for the killing.

Another high-profile trial opened in April for QuaZori Brangman, Jukai Burgess, Aaron Perinchief and Nasaje Anderson, who denied charges that they murdered 19-year-old Letrae Doeman in July 2022.

All had their names cleared after a six-week trial — leaving Mr Doeman on the list of unsolved murder cases.