Maine’s yellow flag law in 3 charts

Use of Maine’s yellow flag law has grown dramatically since the Lewiston mass shooting: Law enforcement agencies completed more than 500 weapons restriction orders in the past 14 months, up from fewer than 100 in the three years prior to the tragedy.

Since August, when an amendment to the yellow flag law went into effect, officers have had the option to apply for a warrant when trying to bring people into protective custody, which is the first step for a weapons restriction order.

Sagadahoc County Sheriff Joel Merry told The Monitor in August that he thought it would be a “good and relevant tool.” Yet, few agencies have used it so far.

The amendment, part of a larger bill to “strengthen public safety by improving Maine’s firearm laws and mental health system,” was a reaction to the October 2023 shooting. Maine’s yellow flag law has come under scrutiny since it was revealed that deputies from the Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office were aware of the shooter’s threats of violence and access to firearms, and had attempted welfare checks on him, but never pursued a weapons restriction order.

The deputies testified before an independent commission that they had no right to enter the home of an uncooperative Robert Card II in order to bring him into protective custody, where he would have been evaluated by a mental health professional for his risk of harm to himself or others. If the evaluator agreed that Card posed a threat, the order would then go to a judge for final approval and Card’s weapons would have been confiscated. But that never happened.

The Maine Monitor found that law enforcement officers often lack direction for how to conduct welfare checks, and their training on mental health lags far behind the reality that cops are usually first to respond to a person in crisis.

Merry, the Sagadahoc County sheriff, said after the scrutiny his agency received post-Lewiston, he and his command-level staff discussed how they could use the yellow flag law more effectively and “take no chances” when threats are made.

Sagadahoc County deputies completed their first weapons restriction order on Nov. 8, 2023, exactly two weeks after the Lewiston shootings. The sheriff’s office has completed 23 more orders since then, the third-highest total in the state as of Jan. 6, 2025.

“If a person makes a threat that they’re going to do harm to themselves or do harm to another person, that’s probable cause to take that person into protective custody,” Merry told The Monitor this month. “I think we were aggressive in doing that.”

Most of his deputies have completed a week-long crisis intervention training course from NAMI Maine, considered the gold standard of mental health training for law enforcement. Some have also completed a training course focused on adolescents in crisis and others have taken a mental health first aid refresher course.

Mental health liaisons

Many law enforcement agencies are incorporating mental health liaisons — trained clinicians who can accompany officers on calls and help connect people to services — into their departments.

Sanford police launched a new mental health unit around the same time that the yellow flag law went into effect, which helped officers develop a “really strong grasp” of the law, Sanford Police Deputy Chief Matt Gagne said.

“We were one of the few agencies in the beginning to really utilize [weapons restriction orders] more than most other agencies,” said Gagné, who was previously the major in charge of the mental health unit. “I attribute that to the fact that we had a dedicated unit that was leading the way.”

On the eve of the Lewiston shootings, Sanford police had completed seven weapons restriction orders, the second-most behind the Maine State Police. As of this month, the department has completed 27 — again second to the state police.

The Sagadahoc County Sheriff’s Office shares a mental health liaison with all the police departments in the county, along with the Brunswick Police Department. The liaison, who is on contract from the nonprofit mental health group Sweetser, started just days before the Lewiston shootings.

Merry said the liaison, Michael Maudlin, is “overworked” — a sign that the departments regularly use his services.

Sanford and Sagadahoc County officers have yet to obtain a warrant for protective custody. It hasn’t been necessary, Gagné and Merry said. While Gagné can’t say for sure that Sanford’s mental health first responder, Shannon Bentley, has helped officers avoid the need for a warrant, he said having a trained clinician available has been “incredibly beneficial.”

“She is a trained professional. That is her job,” he said. “Whereas police officers, we are well-trained in crisis intervention in the moment, and of course with criminal law and things like that. But we don’t have advanced degrees and master’s degrees in that field. So I think it’s greatly beneficial that our agency has somebody like that who can intervene.”

Key takeaways

The Monitor has been following the use of the yellow flag law since the Lewiston shootings by regularly requesting records from the attorney general’s office, which tracks completed orders. Here are some key takeaways:

As of Jan. 6, 2025, 95 law enforcement agencies from across the state have completed 628 weapons restriction orders since the law went into effect four-and-a-half years ago. The agencies hail from every county in the state, with the most orders in Cumberland and York counties and the fewest in Washington County.

Between July 1, 2020, when the yellow flag law went into effect, and Oct. 25, 2023, the day of the Lewiston shootings, agencies had completed just 80 orders — an average of two orders per month.

Since then, agencies have completed 548 orders, for an average of 38 orders per month. Forty-five percent of those — 247 orders — occurred on or after Aug. 9, 2024, when the protective custody warrant amendment went into effect. Thirteen agencies, including police from the University of Maine in Orono and the Maine Warden Service, filed their first order in the past five months.

Only five agencies — Bath and Cumberland police departments, and the sheriffs’ offices in Lincoln, Somerset and Waldo counties — have obtained a warrant to bring someone into protective custody, according to the data.

Men were the subject of the vast majority of orders, with men aged 25 to 54 constituting more than half of all orders. Officers cited a person’s attempts or thoughts of suicide in about three-quarters of all cases.

This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from the Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.

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