(This is the second of a five article series looking at the five law enforcement agencies within Lincoln County.)
Bob Hasch, chief of the Boothbay Harbor Police Department, describes his town a tourist community and a service center – it has a large swelling of visitors and seasonal residents during the summer months, and steady traffic through the winter as people across the peninsula come to do business.
“I think it’s a vacation-y [sic] place, it’s touristy place, with good reason,” Hasch said.
As people come to town to have fun, a certain number of those people will end up having issues, which the police need to deal with, he said.
Summertime is a large draw on the department’s resources, with officers trying to be multiple places at once, Hasch said.
“It’s very busy in the summer. It’s like a much bigger town in the summer,” he said. “We have people on boats, people in hotel rooms; it’s a much different makeup in the summer.”
Even with Hasch, a sergeant, and five full-time officers, the department maintains a number of part-timers who can be called upon in time of need for things like executing search warrants, assisting on a busy night, filling in for sick officers and working within budgetary constraints.
In addition to working with the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office and other law enforcement agencies, Boothbay Harbor Police Department works closely with the town’s harbormaster, the Marine Patrol, and the U.S. Coast Guard on issues that pop up along the waterfront.
“It’s part of being a coastal community,” Hasch said.
One focus, particularly during the busy night hours, are the number of bars in downtown Boothbay Harbor, Hasch said.
The area is enough of a potential hotspot that an officer is often stationed on the pier to preempt fights or other disorderly conduct before it starts, and an officer’s presence can be enough in and of itself to diffuse a situation before it escalates, Hasch said.
“There are more departments that are probably more reactive and some departments are proactive. We’re small enough that we can be proactive,” he said.
The bars themselves do work along side the police department to limit crime by cooperating and maintaining communication, Hasch said.
“It’s very good,” he said. “We work in conjunction with them, hand in hand.”
The department is also proactive in other areas of the town, including working in the high school and doing outreach to the elderly, Hasch said.
Similar to the officer on the pier, School Resource Officer Larry Brown’s presence in the school helps stop things before they start, and he can help counsel the students, Hasch said.
“That’s been very successful; we’ve been very lucky there,” he said.
With elder outreach, the department attempts to educate the citizens about things like potential scams and elder abuse: subjects a number of department members have had specialized courses in, Hasch said.
In years past many of the calls to the police department were about people who had already been scammed, but as the result of outreach, the trend has shifted to calls about people recognizing the scams before they are victimized and share the information with the police, he said.
That kind of positive interaction between the citizens and police is wide-spread, Hasch said.
A lot of the officers in the department coach sports and are otherwise involved in the community and they care about what goes on, which leads to a very community-oriented department, Hasch said.
The department’s outlook is reflected in the community’s actions, where there is no shortage of people calling in with tips and otherwise wanting to help the police, he said.
Facebook has been a boon to the department in that respect, and as a way to reach out to the public.
“That’s actually been a big help,” Hasch said. “We’ve solved several crimes because we notified people on Facebook.”
Good tips from the public, along with good police work, has helped a lot with clearing a number of bigger burglaries and thefts in the past few years, including a number of burglaries just recently solved, Hasch said.
The “massive draw” of burglary and theft investigations is contributed to by a growing amount of drug abuse, Hasch said.
Drugs “have changed the face of law enforcement in the last 10 or 15 years and we’ve done a lot of outreach there,” he said.
Drug abuse takes a lot of the department’s time behind the scenes, as officers work to solve the crimes, help users find assistance, and assist the users’ families, Hasch said.
“It just seems to go with all walks of life,” he said.
Dovetailing with the drug issues is an increasing amount of people who Hasch described as “unstable,” including those dealing with any number of mental issues.
Sometimes those folks break the law, but the department does what it can to get them help, he said.
“Every week we’re dealing with someone … who’s got issues with mental instability,” Hasch said.
Sometimes the issues are over minor things, and officers simply go to listen; other times the officers have be creative in how they help, or have to call services if the person is homeless, living in dangerous circumstances, ill, or otherwise cannot take care of themselves, Hasch said.
He said has seen a lot of things his officers have done to help people in ways that never make the papers.
His department does not have an “us and them” approach to the community, but is invested in it, he said.
“I have worked here in a lucky time in terms of the people that have been here and are here,” Hasch said. “I think that’s the key to any department: good people.”
