The Royal Gazette just published an excellent article on 1st April 2025, headlined, “Crime scenes, brides and pop stars, Ernie McCreight snapped them all”. The article, written by Jessie Moniz Hardy, is of course about our good friend and colleague, retired Sergeant Ernie McCreight who was back in action again volunteering to do the photography for the latest series of extremely high quality Police Sports Superstar cards kindly sponsored by the Hamilton Princess Hotel & Beach Club. CLICK HERE to read the Royal Gazette article.
The latest series includes both our current Sports Superstars and a group of Sports Legends Superstars which I’m sure many of our older members will remember from the 1960’s and 70’s including brilliant cricketer Clarence “Tuppence” Parfitt, Clyde Best of West Ham fame, Commonwealth Games gold medalist high jumper Clarence “Nicky” Saunders who also happens to be the son of our own Clara Saunders, Randy Horton who was a superb allrounder who played Cup Match cricket for Somerset, and football for the New York Cosmos, Olympic Games silver medalist boxer, Clarence Hill, and our brilliant triathlete, now Dame Flora Duffy who become the first triathlete to be the Olympic Champion and the Word Triathlon Champion in the same year - 2020.
As the article explains, this is not the first time Ernie has photographed “Superstars”. In 1991 Ernie was called to the Hamilton Princess to photograph “someone famous” who turned out to be none other than Michael Jackson, the King of Pop!
The article goes on to describe how Ernie first came to Bermuda from Glasgow, Scotland, to work as a police officer and went on to work in our Scenes of Crime office as a photographer where he developed his skills taking photos of crime scenes and was head of crime scene photography for six years before leaving the Police to form his own commercial photography business.
Whilst working in SOCO Ernie took on the job of taking all the photos for the then new Police Sports Superstar Cards in 1986, and a second series of Junior Sports Superstar cards in 1987. The high quality of the photography can be seen in this Junior Sports Superstar card for Shawn Goater who went on to stardom in the English Premier Football League where he scored 103 goals as a striker for Manchester City to chants of "Feed the Goat and he will Score".
The first two sets of Superstar cards were published almost 40 years ago, and if you check out the brilliant quality of these latest Superstar/Legends cards you’ll see that Ernie has kept up fully up-to-date with modern technology in photography as noted by Superintendent Martin Weekes in the following comments about Ernie’s involvement in the latest series of Police Superstar/Legends cards:-
“The Bermuda Police Service is happy to acknowledge the immense contribution that Sgt (retired) Ernie McCreight has made to the BPS Superstars Card Series over the years. Starting back in the 1980’s Ernie’s photography was essential to the success of these trading cards that have become a fixture of Police Community Relations. The newest set of cards released in 2025, once again feature Ernie’s work, this time with Ernie utilising state-of-the-art “green screen” technology to further enhance the photos of the featured athletes & Legends. We are proud to have Ernie on the team for this initiative long after he retired from active duty in the Police Forensic Unit”.
EDITORS NOTE - As a postscript to this article, I would like to mention that our ExPo website features hundreds of photos taken by CRO/SOCO staff over the years, including group photos of sports and social activities, and in particular, warrant card photos taken when recruits first joined the Bermuda Police, and also when officers were promoted. These photos are only passsport size but the quality of the vast majority of them are excellent and are a testament to the abilities of our police photographers over the years. They have proved to be an invaluable resource when producing articles for our website.
We have had some outstanding police photographers over the years, and Ernie McCreight was no doubt one of the best of the best. CLICK HERE to read more about Ernie and his reminiscences in our "Then and Now" column
For more information about the "History of Forensic Photography in Bermuda" we recommend that you read George Rose’s extensive article on the subect. CLICK HERE to view it.