Police see increase in reports for holidays

PITTSFIELD – With 25 years of police service under his belt, Sgt. Tim Roussin admitted Sunday that he really hates holidays. “I dread seeing them come,” he said.

Everything is intensified at Christmas. Loneliness is greater. Financial difficulties are spotlighted. And family tensions – often fueled by alcohol – frequently erupt into violence.

Police officers are on the front lines and often spend their holiday season dealing with an increased number of domestic assaults, depression-induced suicide attempts and drunken driving incidents.

In Fairfield on Saturday, police recovered dozens of Christmas presents stolen by a 22-year-old man who had re-wrapped the gifts and put his own family members’ names on them.

Several ambulance calls over the past week have been for people overdosing on medication. One woman told the 911 dispatcher “I have nothing to live for.”

“Every year we experience this and it seems to be getting worse,” Roussin said. “This year, oil prices are really hurting people, especially those whose household budgets are already tight. Even us. I spend half what I make just on gasoline and oil.”

In the last few days, Roussin had to deal with an intoxicated man who assaulted his wife because he was unemployed and couldn’t buy Christmas presents.

“Once he was in custody, he said he was suicidal,” Roussin said, “so we took him to the hospital. He was under arrest so we had to stay with him, but he also was intoxicated and crisis workers won’t see him until his blood alcohol level drops. The jail won’t take him until he is seen by crisis workers.

“We had to wait at the hospital with him from 9 p.m. to 8:30 in the morning, leaving the town uncovered,” Roussin said. “That’s stressful on us.”

“I tried to tell one guy at a domestic situation that beer wouldn’t help,” Roussin recalled. “He said it was all he had.”

Roussin said Maine’s rural, working-class residents are at the point where they make enough money so they do not qualify for public assistance, but not enough money to pay their bills.

“They’re depressed and self-medicating,” he said.

People pushed to the limit often react recklessly. In Waterville, in just seven hours between Saturday night and Sunday morning, police responded to reports of two fights and two cases of domestic violence.

Who knows what holiday demons pushed a 28-year-old Vassalboro man to wave a rifle around in the middle of the street in Gardiner last Friday, an act that eventually ended with his death, shot by local and state police?

Belfast police reported committing three people for a mental health stay last week.

Several Belfast officers have taken crisis intervention classes and just before the holiday season the Pittsfield Police Department held meetings to discuss crisis preparedness.

Lt. Tom Reagan of the Bangor Police Department said the holiday season tends to bring an increase in domestic violence and, over the past weekend alone, there were six such cases in Bangor.

“That’s heavy,” he said, noting that the typical average in Bangor is about two a weekend. “There’s a lot of stress – the change of season, the winter solstice and the holidays,” he said.

Even traffic accidents increase, as is the case in Bangor. At one point during the peak shopping week before Christmas, Bangor police were handling one accident an hour.

A Detroit couple involved in a crash at the Bangor Mall on Saturday were told when they called for an officer that it was going to be a long wait – most officers were tied up with traffic crashes elsewhere.

BDN writer Dawn Gagnon contributed to this report.

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