Drug task force proposal to be aired at forum

ELLSWORTH – Only if area residents say “enough is enough” will Hancock County become the first county in the state to fund an anti-drug task force.

Because of the lack of state resources, the only way to drag Hancock County out of its drug dilemma is to establish a team of three law enforcement officers who will fight drug activity full time, according to county officials.

It is up to county residents, however, to voice support for the proposal if a dragnet team is to be established, Hancock County officials said Tuesday.

Hancock County residents and county and municipal officials will have the chance to do that, or to speak out against the idea, at a countywide meeting on the issue. The forum has been scheduled tentatively for 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 22, at Ellsworth High School, according to Hancock County Clerk Ray Bickford.

If the proposal were approved, Hancock County would be the first county in the state to fund law enforcement positions designated solely for combating the use of drugs.

“If we don’t do it ourselves, nobody else will,” Hancock County Sheriff William Clark told county commissioners Tuesday. The state does not have the money or manpower to commit drug enforcement agents to Hancock County, he said.

Clark said that residents from all over the county should attend the forum to voice their opinions, whether or not they support the idea.

“I know there are a lot of people supporting this,” Clark said.

Clark said three law enforcement agencies in the county, one of which would be his department, would each contribute an officer to work full time for the task force. If a contributing agency wanted to fill the vacancy left by the newly appointed drug agent, the county would pay for that agency to hire a new officer, he said.

The officers on the task force would be considered Maine Drug Enforcement Agency agents with authority to enforce anti-drug laws anywhere in the state and would be supervised by MDEA, Clark said.

The projected cost of the three-person task force would be $200,000, according to Clark. The cost of the program for a county resident with a property valued at $100,000 would be $3.02, he said.

County residents can choose to spend their tax dollars on the task force, or they can continue to have their tax dollars spent on the county’s drug problem in different ways, Clark said.

The estimated medical costs for Robert Dembek, 20, a Bangor man who died on June 23 while in custody of the Hancock County Jail after he reportedly told corrections officers he had ingested a large amount of drugs, is expected to be $10,000, Clark pointed out. If the county cannot recover that expense through other means, it will have to pay those costs through property taxes, he said.

“Ten thousand dollars would go a long way to fighting [the county’s drug problem],” Clark said.

Exactly how much the task force would cost depends on which departments would contribute officers, according to the sheriff.

Clark received approval from county commissioners Tuesday for a job description within his department for one of the positions. The sheriff told the commissioners that he needs to have the county approve the job description before he can find someone in his department who will be willing to join the task force.

“It’s certainly a problem here,” Ken Shea, Hancock County commissioner chairman, said of the county’s high level of drug abuse.

Shea and his fellow commissioner, Royce Perkins, expressed dismay that the state was not taking a more active role in dealing with the drug problem in Hancock County.

“This is putting the burden on the property taxpayer,” Perkins said. “Somehow, the word really doesn’t get to the people over there in Augusta.”