Chief makes case for station site

Bangor Police Chief Don Winslow is a strong believer in the concept of community policing.

He takes pride in running a department whose mission is not only to arrest lawbreakers but to be accessible to all of the city’s residents, to be a comforting presence in their midst and to respond to calls even from those people whose concerns and problems may not necessarily constitute emergencies.

Which is why he understands completely the frustrations of more than 2,300 Bangor residents whose petition this summer forced a citywide vote on the Nov. 2 ballot asking people to rescind the City Council’s decision to build a new police station near the airport on Maine Avenue and locate it downtown instead, near the intersection of Cedar and Main streets.

“I certainly respect their feelings and I commend them for all the hard work they did in getting those signatures,” he said. “It does send a strong message that there are lots of people who really want the police station downtown.”

And while Winslow agrees with them that there is a tangible benefit to having the police station downtown, a visible structure from which the regular movements of patrol cars can serve as a deterrent to crime, he’s afraid that erecting the new quarters on the much smaller and more expensive 240 Main Street site would prove to be a big mistake should the station need to be expanded years from now.

The Main Street parcel is only 1.8 acres, he pointed out, while the Maine Avenue location would allow the police department 5 acres on which to grow.

“In an ideal world,” Winslow said, “I’d like to take the Maine Avenue property and set it downtown. But in the real world, there doesn’t appear to be anything available downtown that would give us that room. I like what the Maine Avenue property offers, as do the majority of my officers, and the city could save about a million dollars if we build there.”

Winslow said he would, of course, fully support the wishes of Bangor residents should they vote to build on Main Street. But if the referendum does not pass, and the city proceeds with plans to build near the airport, Winslow insists the quality of police work people have always expected from his department would not be compromised.

People would no longer see cruisers issuing from a downtown building, which Winslow admits may provide a police station’s neighbors with a certain sense of security, but the familiar sight of cruisers moving steadily through downtown will not change. The number of patrols that monitor the area will not be affected, either, and response times to downtown calls will not be noticeably different.

Cops will also continue to patrol the downtown on bicycles, he said, and a satellite parking division planned for the lower level of the Pickering Square parking garage will create at least a minor stationary downtown presence.

One of the biggest concerns among petitioners, he acknowledged, was the potentially adverse effect that moving the headquarters from downtown would have on people who prefer to visit the station personally to do business or to express concerns.

“We do have a lot of walk-in traffic,” Winslow said. “But when the controversy began, we looked into it and found that the vast majority of people who come to the front counter arrive here by car. The number of people who walk to the station is limited. So except for losing an actual physical building downtown, our presence there will really not be any different from what it is now.”