Bangor Police Beat – Saturday 10 p.m. to

2 a.m.

It was late. We were idling along at 25 mph when the radio sputtered a series of numbers. There was a fight outside a downtown bar. Acceleration pushed me down into my seat and we were at 40. A sharp call for backup.

We were at an urgent 55 and the strobe on top of the squad car lit up the road in disjointed fragments. Another scratching call. The siren split open and we were traveling fast. The few cars we encountered squeezed to the side of the road. The radio again. The fight was under control. We slowed and arrived a minute later.

There were a few groups standing around, but the calm of the situation matched the autumn evening. Four police cars had already arrived – no flashing lights, no fanfare, just their sobering presence. The bike policemen were talking with the participants, innocent in shorts and bike helmets, but the big shadows on their hips were still 40-caliber Berettas.

Lt. Steve Hunt, my driver and in command of the Bangor Police Department that night, was relaxed and alert. He is a master of the 15-second “how’ya doing, buddy?” conversation and flowed quietly through the parking lot like the incoming tide, washing in and out its nooks and crannies. It turned out to be a “consensual” fight, and, like most disturbances in Bangor, fired by alcohol. No charges were filed. The police cars quietly

disappeared back onto the city streets.

Steve likes to talk, is good at it, and found in me a ready listener as we drove around on the Saturday 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. beat. As a Bangor city councilor I wanted to find out firsthand what Bangor looks like through the eyes of the police – particularly in light of the proposed Palesky 1 percent tax cap with its attendant 54 percent reduction in Bangor’s municipal revenues. I also wanted to know what the police thought about the location of the new police station.

Bangor is a safe city, second only to Bismark, N.D., for a city of its size. It has the same problems with drugs and domestic violence that afflict all cities, but from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. the villain is alcohol. There are 10 bars – regular bars, gay bars, biker bars, loud and noisy bars, quiet bars – and we drove past them all, several times, occasionally stopping to chat.

There used to be more violence up to the mid ’80s but strict OUI laws and mandatory sentencing have cut back on overt drunkenness. And then there are the Bangor police; they are simply there with inevitable certainty, quiet, unobtrusive, omnipresent. Eight single cops in eight cars, meandering slowly around until a radio call brings them together.

The 1 percent Palesky tax cap would destroy what several generations of Bangor police have given their professional careers to build; perhaps more significantly it will destroy their morale and esprit for another several generations. It is hard to ask someone to care about our community, carry a gun and perhaps use it, stand in

harm’s way, and then cut away support.

Steve takes his work seriously, and a placid nocturnal Bangor is the focus of his considerable energy and talent. His mind is in constant motion with the myriad of details of the evening, assigning his crews, and getting them together quickly. He is still young and full of energy at 38, but tired after 18 years on the force and, like many of the police, older than his stated years. Living on the edge has taken its toll. His is a position of responsibility and he takes pride in his officers and doing his job well. It is unfathomable to Steve why our community would withdraw support for a job done successfully.

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Drug enforcement, educational programs, DARE, undercover units, bike patrols, K9 units and training programs will disappear overnight. There will be a minimum of patrol cars on the streets, and they will respond only to serious crime against persons – and then with slower reaction times. There will little traffic enforcement and no officer present or investigation of accidents in which damage is less than $1,000. Crime prevention and low-key control will be but memories. The Bangor PD already lacks three officers due to budget restraints; current officers make up for this deficiency by working harder.

Morale is good but a policeman’s life is not easy. To eviscerate the force by cutting its budget with a meat ax is to destroy law enforcement as it now exists. The Palesky approach to property tax reform is a bloody and open invitation to the bad old days. Violent nights will return to Bangor.

The location of the new police station isn’t as important to Steve as the fact that there be a new station. The current building occupies an unstable hillside, is crumbling and currently uninsurable. Three of its five floors are unusable. Many of the police favor a site two miles from the city center by the airport because it is larger, offers the potential for easier growth, and can be built on more economically.

The proposed downtown location at 240 Main St. would also work, and although it might initially require a larger financial investment it would keep the police station as a downtown anchor. Another several million would allow a first-class station downtown but Steve is not sure that Bangor taxpayers will be willing to foot the bill. He acknowledges that a central location would lend a sense of community to Bangor’s downtown, but regardless of location he and his fellow officers will be out in their patrol cars roaming and watching.

The dispatcher relayed another call about unknown persons in an abandoned building downtown. We arrived first this time, a bare minute after the call went out. Steve’s flashlight beam probed the darkness; doors and windows seemed OK. Then at the far corner he found an open window.

A quiet call and another patrol car pulled up. Two bike police materialized. The arrival of the K9 van with the intermittent low woof of its passenger was the only vaguely threatening undercurrent to this otherwise peaceful evening. A low call and command. Two men in their 20s came out the window with hands up, were handcuffed, and sat on a wall. Two women, three dogs and another man eventually followed.

Steve’s motto, “Be nice, be nice, be nice until it’s time not to be nice, then be nice again,” only required repetition of its first two phrases. They were roamers, migrant workers. A check of their records in Maine and nationally didn’t turn up any problem and the sniffing shepherd didn’t find any drugs in their backpacks. Should they be arrested for breaking and entering, criminal trespass, or simply sent on their way? Steve’s call. They looked like OK kids and he sent them on their way.

Bangor was quiet again and the police cars moved off into the night.

Geoff Gratwick is a Bangor city councilor.