Police often feel handcuffed in dealing with intoxicated

Being drunk in downtown Bangor is not a crime. Police officers are not authorized to arrest a person for simply being intoxicated in public, but often the Bangor Police Department receives numerous complaints from concerned citizens or business owners who want an intoxicated person removed from the downtown area.

The question that police officers are faced with on an almost daily basis is where to take that person.

Deputy Chief Joseph Ferland of the Bangor Police Department said drunk people hanging around downtown is not a new problem, but one that seems to have grown increasingly evident in recent months.

“We used to have jail cells here at the station and we would fill them with these people. We can no longer house people here. Being drunk is not an arrestable offense. A lot of the time our hands are tied,” said Ferland.

When the legislature voted in 1973 to decriminalize public intoxication, substance abuse shelters, such as the Hope House in Bangor, were established to deal with the drunk people who previously would have ended up in jail.

Ferland praised the Hope House for the way the staff works with the department. However, the Hope House has policies and sometimes those policies end up leaving police officers in a lurch when trying to get a drunk person off the streets.

Hope House administrators do not like to accept clients before 5 p.m. because of rehabilitation sessions going on in the same building, said Director Don Emmons.

Emmons said that the staff would never turn away a drunk person in an emergency situation.

“I realize it’s very difficult for the police department. We’ve worked well with them in the past and if it’s an emergency we will take them into our emergency shelter during the day. But sometimes when people are intoxicated they are agitated and we can’t have them coming in here looking for a fight — especially when we have people in here that are truly trying to go through rehabilitation,” said Emmons.

Ferland said he realized the problems at the Hope House and said police officers attempted to deal with intoxicated people during the day, but often had to arrest them in order to get them off the street.

The decriminalization of public intoxication was intended to avoid the cost of putting alcoholics in jail and through the court system. Often jail is the only alternative available, Ferland said.

“We’ll arrest them for their own safety and for the safety of the citizens on the street,” said Ferland.

Often police will charge the intoxicated person with disorderly conduct, criminal trespass or obstructing a public way.

If the intoxicated people are incapacitated and the police officer fears for their safety there is the option of taking them to a local emergency room.

Much of the time, however, the person is simply drunk and being a nuisance, Ferland said.

There have always been intoxicated people on the streets of Bangor, Ferland said. Nice weather seems to make the problem more obvious because more people are in the downtown area and more intoxicated people are out on the street.

Urban renewal may also have played a part. Ferland said that many of the vacant buildings that intoxicated people stayed in have been torn down. The waterfront was also a gathering spot, and as the waterfront area develops that particular group of people gravitate to Main Street, Ferland said.

Bangor is also the end of the Greyhound Bus line and Ferland said that many homeless people, including many alcoholics, wind up with a one way ticket to Bangor. Many decide to stay.

Mel Tremper, a supervisor at office of substance abuse, said substance abuse shelters such as the Hope House were limited in their ability to deal with the growing number of clients.

“The shelters are the first line of defense to provide a safe alternative for these people. It doesn’t solve the problem it just helps alleviate it temporarily. In the past there have been differences between the needs of police and the limitations of the shelters,” said Tremper.