The handful of sheriff’s deputies who patrol Washington County, a sparsely populated but sprawling area nearly three times the size of Rhode Island, have struggled to keep up with basic law enforcement since police staffing in the area has waned, according to local officials.
Residents have waited hours for an officer to arrive after calling 911, a state senator said. A county commissioner has worried about more dangerous driving on county roads, especially the threat of drunk drivers, because officers don’t have time to conduct basic traffic enforcement. In the year after the Maine State Police pulled back from helping with patrol coverage in mid-2023 — spurred by that agency’s own attempts to juggle mounting responsibilities among its own short-staffed force — the county sheriff’s office responded to nearly 4,000 additional calls, a 42 percent increase.
Those were some of the examples cited during a public hearing before the Maine Legislature’s criminal justice and public safety committee on Monday in support of two bills that would boost police coverage in Washington County and other rural parts of the state where officials have expressed similar concerns.
The underlying issue is not new: Washington County officials especially have complained for years that the sheriff’s office does not have the workforce to provide adequate police coverage. Sheriff’s offices and troopers have historically shared the responsibility of patrolling towns without their own police department, but the state police has gradually pulled back from rural patrol to focus on more specialized duties.
The state agency was approved to add 16 positions — half of what it had originally pushed for — and made recent strides in filling vacancies. But that hasn’t made a difference in responding to service calls in Washington County, where the state police now only provide assistance for special services. The sheriff’s office employs 14 deputies, according to legislative testimony.
“The passage and funding of four troopers living in and being assigned to patrol Washington County would help to remedy this critical situation,” said David Burns, chairperson of the Washington County commissioners, as he testified in support of LD 461, which would fund those additional state police positions. The bill arose out of discussions between county officials and the state police, he said.
Burns and others told lawmakers that the taxpayers in his county, some of the poorest in the state, are too strained to fix the problem on their own, echoing officials from other rural areas who would like greater police support. Another bill, LD 477, would add 15 more state troopers and nine corporals specifically to assist sheriff’s offices around the state with patrol coverage.
In an interview, Burns said he did not have any data on police response times in Washington County but said that he has heard frequent complaints about response times and a lack of traffic enforcement. Several sheriff’s office deputies told commissioners during the county’s recent budget meetings that it was difficult for them to go from one call to another in a timely manner, he said.
Crime in Maine has fallen in recent years, continuing a statewide downward trend. But Washington County officials said that doesn’t mean officers aren’t still overwhelmed by the number of calls they must respond to, especially when they are required to travel far distances to get from one to the next.
Officials also said that residents don’t feel as safe as they used to, citing a spate of high-profile violent crimes in recent years, fueled by the county’s drug epidemic.
Rep. William Tuell, R-East Machias, said he witnessed this firsthand last summer while campaigning in one of his district’s more rural towns. While knocking on doors, few people answered, until he finally encountered a woman who explained that her neighbors were nervous about people coming onto their property.
“Things were missing from the neighborhood, chainsaws, firewood, an ATV had disappeared, rumors of drug activity, and such,” Tuell wrote in written testimony. “People — many of them elderly — were scared to leave their homes, knew that there wasn’t any law enforcement within 20-30 minutes on a good day, and had pretty much resigned to the fact that they had to watch out for their own property.”
Reporter Callie Ferguson may be reached at [email protected].
