Bangor to hire two police officers with federal grant

BANGOR — Police Chief Randy Harriman has decided to accept the federal government’s offer of two new police officers for the city. He plans to recommend that the City Council start the hiring.

The grant has been awarded under a Justice Department program created by last year’s anti-crime bill. Fifty-three Maine towns and eight counties could share the $3,981,603 slated for the state.

If all the money were accepted by the communities, more than 60 new police officers could hit the streets in Maine.

The program is designed to provide additional officers to agencies serving communities with populations less than 50,000.

Harriman said he was hesitant at first about accepting the money because the city would have to pick up 35 percent or $90,000 of the officers’ salaries for the next three years, then absorb the cost completely.

The deal for Bangor would consist of the government’s providing $150,000 to the city for two officers for the next three years. The actual cost would be about $240,000, with the city carrying the difference.

That, coupled with an expected congressional vote next week that could transfer the money slated for the community officers’ program into block grants that would award states and municipalities 100 percent of an officer’s salary, caused Harriman to examine his options carefully.

He concluded that the block grants would be more favorable but could leave Bangor out in the cold. Those grants would be based on a community’s crime index, and Bangor’s crime rate has decreased by 10 percent in the past 20 years, making the city an unlikely candidate.

Harriman reviewed the past 19 years and found the following facts:

The department has 79 employees, just one short of the 19-year average of 80.

The number of reported crimes is down 10 percent from 1975, when the department employed 80 people.

The city’s population has grown by only about 1,000 people in those 19 years.

That caused Harriman to question whether the department really needed two new police officers. But the information also puzzled the chief because he was aware that his officers were busy.

He continued to research data and discovered that although reported crimes had decreased, the number of calls that officers responded to annually had tripled since 1975.

That helped convince Harriman to take advantage of the opportunity offered by the federal government. If all goes according to plan, the city will advertise for the officers next month, with the department hoping the new hires will attend the state’s police academy in April. Those officers could be on the street by next spring.

The chief cited several reasons for the increase in police calls, including a more mobile statewide population. “There was a boom 10 years ago in which a lot more vehicles were purchased and people became much more mobile,” he said.

That increase has resulted in more traffic in the city. Therefore, he said, accidents have increased and there are more traffic stops than 20 years ago.

He said people are quicker to report things to police than they were in the 1970s. Not all of the calls result in a reportable crime. So the crime rate does not reflect the increase in calls for service by the department, he said.

For example, Harriman said, neighbors are much more likely to report a domestic fight today, but often police arrive to find that a couple is simply having a loud argument and that no crime has been committed.

He also noted a sharp increase in the number of subpoenas that officers are serving. In 1975, officers served about two subpoenas a month. Today Bangor police serve about 300 subpoenas a month, he said.

He attributed that increase to prosecutors’ desire to call more witnesses during trials. Twenty years ago, an officer who made an arrest often would be the only witness. Today, prosecutors want to hear from almost everyone involved in the case, Harriman said.