BANGOR – He’s back.

Former Penobscot County Sheriff Timothy Richardson on Tuesday announced his bid to reclaim his former seat.

Richardson, who served as the county’s sheriff from 1980 to 1984, met with the press at the Coach House Restaurant in Brewer Tuesday morning.

Saying he has grown and learned since his earlier term, Richardson said he is compelled to run because of the “direction that law enforcement has been heading for the last few years.”

He said the department had failed to expand on the contractual law enforcement program that he initiated back in the 1980s and called the recent decision to eliminate the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program from the department an “unforgivable sin.”

Richardson, a Democrat from Hermon, most recently worked at MBNA, but resigned to devote all of his time to the sheriff’s race. He will face retired Bangor police Officer Richard Stitham of Levant in the June primary.

Other candidates, including Penobscot County Sgt. Joseph Dauphinee, have said they intend to run on the Democratic ticket, but as of Tuesday, Stitham was the only other Democrat to have returned his nomination papers to the Secretary of State’s Office.

Richardson said Tuesday that if elected he would seek to tighten security at the courthouses in Bangor, reinstate the D.A.R.E. program and “bring management back to the jail.”

“I’ve worked in every job there is in that department. You can’t treat your employees like second-class citizens,” Richardson said, referring to what he believes to be the reason for the high turnover rate among corrections officers.

Richardson said the people of Penobscot County deserve to have someone with his experience managing the $4.5 million Sheriff’s Department budget.

Richardson admits he was a controversial sheriff, (he sued the county commissioners) but said he “was a very young sheriff” and was now able to be more effective.

“I’m also a better politician and, face it, this is a political position,” he said.

Richardson was defeated in the June primary in 1984 by Glenn Ross who went on to lose in the general election to Edward Reynolds.

Richardson ran against Reynolds in 1986 and again in 1990, but lost both times.

Reynolds announced recently that he would not seek re-election because of ill health.

Richardson is certified by the Criminal Justice Academy, where he has served as an instructor. He graduated from the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va.

He said Tuesday that he planned to expand the department’s civil division, if elected.

“It is the only profitable, revenue-generating division within the sheriff’s department … and is currently underutilized. This would be an excellent source of revenue to re-establish the D.A.R.E. program,” he wrote in his campaign literature.

Acknowledging that the Penobscot County sheriff’s race traditionally has been contentious and controversial, Richardson vowed Tuesday that personalities would not get in the way this time.

“This is going to be about issues and issues only,” he said.