‘Tis the season to beef up Bar Harbor police force

BAR HARBOR – As Officer Shaun Farrar slowly navigated his police cruiser Friday night through the throngs of pedestrians and vehicles that choked Cottage Street, his eyes darted from side to side.

It was the beginning of Fourth of July weekend, Bar Harbor’s busiest time, and the policeman had to be ready for just about anything.

“I just look at people on the sidewalks, make sure everything’s kosher,” he said. “There’s a lot of people in town, a lot of people that are partying.”

Bar Harbor, a tourist town that is unique in Down East Maine, is said to have a split personality: notoriously quiet in the winter and infamously busy in the summer. The holiday weekend historically divides the two.

“There’s wintertime Bar Harbor and there’s summertime,” Edwin Garrett, longtime Bar Harbor police dispatcher, said Friday night. “One’s a small, intimate community, and one’s a tourist resort. So here we are, the busiest weekend of the entire year.”

The town prepares itself for the summer onslaught of tourists and seasonal workers by bulking up its police force considerably. Farrar has been on the squad for a total of five years, and he laughed at the seasonal difference in his duties.

“[Summer’s] a thousand times more interesting,” he said. “You get tired of the wintertime doldrums.”

Farrar circled the downtown district several times looking for trouble and spotted a white car at about 10 p.m. that held some possibilities.

The officer radioed in the car’s license plate number to see if it was a match with that of an area man suspected of dealing cocaine. It was.

He circled around again looking for the man, but the car and driver both disappeared into the foggy night.

Farrar, who works full time as a Maine Drug Enforcement agent, said that he keeps an eye on the local illegal drug scene when he takes patrol shifts.

As the officer drove around the town’s back roads and through the cemeteries, illuminating the tombstones with a bright spotlight, he also was looking for the town’s perpetual summer pranksters: teens, rowdy tourists and illegal campers.

He urged a group of young boys loitering with cigarettes in the parking lot of the Grand Hotel on Main Street to move on.

“There’s certain places where the kids hang out, and this isn’t one of them,” he said. “I just didn’t want them to get any new bad habits.”

Farrar counted off the most common summertime busts, including a few varieties of public displays of indecency, alcohol-fueled fights and noisy gatherings.

“I caught a couple having sex on the Village Green right by the Police Department one night,” he said. “People have sex in cars a lot.”

After more slow circles around town, Farrar hit an action jackpot at 11:14 p.m.: A black Subaru Forester was driving up the Eagle Lake Road without any lights. Another police cruiser turned on its flashing blue lights to pull it over, but the driver didn’t stop. Farrar stepped on the gas pedal in a sudden burst of speed to back up the first police car.

With two police cars tailing him, the man pulled over and stepped out. Farrar watched carefully as the other officers took flashlights and checked out the vehicle.

“You never know around here what the night’s going to hold,” he said.