Wiscasset Police Lt. John Allen has apologized for a statement he made during a meeting with his board of selectmen last week.
Allen’s comments to the board were to the effect that Wiscasset cannot always rely on the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office to fill in the gaps in Wiscasset police coverage. He made his comments in the context of making a case that the town needs to consider adding another police officer.
Unfortunately, Allen’s remarks went off like a stink bomb among deputies in the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, many of whom have spent a fair amount of time now and again helping out the Wiscasset Police Dept. in one fashion or another.
Not only is it their duty to lend a professional hand, Wiscasset, like every other Lincoln County town, hands over a significant chunk of change in taxes each year for the privilege of the Sheriff’s services.
On one hand, Allen is probably right to offer an apology to the deputies with whom he has to maintain a working relationship, but on the other hand, we don’t think the thrust of his argument should be ignored.
LCSO may answer every single time Wiscasset calls, as they do for all of Lincoln County’s four municipal police departments, but we wouldn’t recommend taxpayers in those towns get comfortable skimping on their police budgets to rely on the Sheriff’s Office.
We strongly feel local funding decisions should be based on the merits of the specific need, not on the possibility of something that might or might not happen. In public safety in particular, there are too many variables in play.
LCSO deputies will always answer the call because they are duty bound to do so, but the reality is, at any given time there are only three or four deputies on duty to cover all of Lincoln County’s 425-square miles, encompassing 19 separate municipalities.
If the call is at one end of the county and the nearest available deputy is at the other, then the caller is going to have to wait and they could wait a while if there is one or more equally critical calls ahead of theirs. That can happen when the amount of work outstrips the available manpower.
The bottom line is if more police are truly needed, then the money will come from one pocket or another. Sooner or later it will have to. If the relevant town doesn’t come through, the growing workload will eventually force Sheriff Brackett to go before the county budget committee and make essentially the same argument Lt. Allen made last week.
Allen cited a number of sobering crime statistics while making his case, but his numbers are not unique. Every department in the county can produce the same kind of stats telling the same kind of story. Crime is up. The population is constantly growing, times are hard; drugs and alcohol are still pervasive problems.
None of this is news and none of this is going away anytime soon.
The question for Wiscasset taxpayers is whether or not they want to embrace a full-time professional police force.
Police cost money, and officers are expensive, there is no doubt about that, but if Wiscasset citizens want to make their best effort to secure their own public safety, then hiring another officer is something that should probably be considered.
