Police charge Bangor man with assault

Bangor police arrested a man on assault charges Thursday even though his girlfriend denied he had struck her.

Officers Jason Stewart, Jason McAmbley and Steve Jordan went to a Cedar Street apartment at about 1:15 p.m. after a report of a domestic assault.

Stewart said Jordan stood listening by a window while the other two officers stood at the door. Jordan could hear a disturbance inside. When Jordan heard somebody being struck, Stewart said, they knocked on the door.

A woman came out after 10 seconds. She said nothing happened, then started crying, Stewart said. When asked to show him her stomach and back, the woman showed Stewart a 12-inch-long welt on her back that she said she got from lying on her bed.

Stewart said he spoke with Harold Eames, the woman’s boyfriend, who said they had just had a verbal fight.

Officer McAmbley said the woman told him there had been some pushing, and that she had fallen onto the bed, hurting her back on a drawer that was on the bed.

Eames was arrested for assault.

McAmbley said he called the woman’s mother later, who he learned was trying to find her. The mother told him her daughter had just been on the phone with her saying Eames had shoved her onto the bed and had punched her in the stomach. She is four or five months pregnant.

Brewer residents and police officers met at the Brewer Auditorium on Wednesday evening to discuss trends in community policing.

Sgt. Jason Moffitt started off the meeting with a review of a University of Maine survey. The survey, administered by two graduate students, addressed community perceptions of law enforcement and crime issues such as illegal drug use, emergency response times, and overall safety in Brewer.

Moffitt said the study showed Brewer residents thought very highly of the police force, and the majority felt safe in the city.

The 53 respondents to the survey indicated that reduced drug availability and a more visible police presence were believed to have the most effect on crime, while either increasing or reducing gun restrictions, or enacting resident patrols, would not be as effective.

Moffitt said Brewer police had received a grant from the Maine Bureau of Highway Safety to put up roadblocks and send out patrols dedicated to stopping drunken drivers. A grant from the Justice Department allowed Brewer police to have laptops in their cruisers, permitting them to spend less time filing reports at the station and therefore more time on the street.

“If they [criminals] see the cruisers out there, they’re not going to go into that neighborhood – it’s that simple,” Chief Steve Barker said.

Moffitt said he hoped some of the attendees would become more involved, and hoped to initiate a community policing group that would allow the police to hear residents’ comments on a regular basis.

One man at the meeting, a truck driver, raised the issue of tractor-trailer trucks speeding on North Main Street, which Moffitt and Barker both acknowledged has been a chronic problem. Barker assured him his complaints would not be ignored.

All parties agreed that as soon as a truck spots a radar trap in Brewer, every driver from there to Aurora knows about it.

– Compiled by NEWS reporter Isaac Kimball