SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — He argued with his supervisor and got disciplined, made friends with drug dealers in order to get news from the street, and he isn’t afraid to tell you that one night he returned home from a grueling night of investigating and threw his clothing on the floor.
Seconds later, South Portland police Detective Sgt. Steve Webster pulled on those same clothes and headed back out the door when a new tip surfaced in the case he was investigating.
Webster’s self-published book “One Promise Kept” is about a promise he made to a 7-year-old crime victim, but it’s also a glimpse into the life of one lifelong Mainer who carried a gun and badge.
“It’s not always pretty, the cases don’t get wrapped up in an hour as they do on TV, and the decisions we are forced to make in an instant can be scrutinized for years,” Webster says in the prologue.
That is the life of a person who puts on the uniform.
“I’m no different from a guy in Bangor who does this job,” Webster said recently during a phone interview.
Webster published the book a year ago, with help from reporter Trevor Maxwell, after working since 1987 for South Portland Police Department where he spent time as an agent for the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, and as the Criminal Investigation Division supervisor.
The book takes readers through the steps Webster made while investigating a 1998 home burglary involving two Asian girls who were tied up, had their jewelry stolen and had weapons pointed at them.
“It doesn’t get any more real,” Bangor police Detective Larry Morrill said recently about the book. “This is from right here in Maine. This is reality.”
While telling the story, Webster touches upon drug addiction and trafficking in the state, the poor, domestic violence, sex and murder — including some of the scariest moments of his life — and how he merged responding to those into his everyday life, which included marriage, three children and an ill father.
“My work was a slide show of death, degradation and filth, and then I would return home where I was expected to be a loving husband and doting father,” Webster wrote. “It wasn’t easy.”
The same was true sometimes when responding to police calls.
“We’re human and we have emotions and we’re expected to smile all the time and it’s not always possible,” Webster said. “The cop who shows up to deal with someone’s broken window may have just come from a fatal accident and that broken window may not be that important.”
The sacrifices police and other law enforcement officials make are demonstrated again and again in the 158-page book, interspersed with what Webster calls black humor.
“Laughter is a tool we use to manage that stress,” he writes about himself and fellow officers.
The five men who broke into the Asian girl’s home eventually were arrested and convicted of the crime — a moment Webster found gratifying — and he was able to keep his promise.
“I made that girl a promise and I never thought I would be able to keep it,” Webster said. “I promised her the night that it happened that I would catch these people.”
And so he did.
Webster’s book is available online at onepromisekept.com.
Mr. Webster–you must be pleased that your chief, Ed Googins, is such a fine man.
I could never be a cop. I get to emotional.
Sounds like a great story, but exactly what is the significance of the crime victims being Asian? It doesn’t seem to add any depth to the article.
Number 8,999,999 book about the same topic- just different names
I like to read books written by and about people working in law enforcement.
One of the more recent books I have read is written by a former FBI agent
named Donald Goulet called CHESUNCOOK which details his life working as a FBI agent in Bangor.
A former Viet Nam veteran, Mr Goulet details his lifelong struggle with mental illness
brought on in part from the PTSD he developed while fighting in Viet Nam.
What became quickly frightening to me was this man carried a Glock .40 and a FBI badge
while he literally fell apart emotionally on the streets of Bangor.
While the book will never win any awards for literary style I salute Mr Goulet
for the honesty with which he shared his demons.
Wesley Swearingen is another FBI agent who has authored 2 non fiction books.
He was a young FBI agent when President Kennedy was assassinated.
His most recent book TO KILL A PRESIDENT published in 2006 details his insider knowledge of
how FBI agents were involved in assassinating President Kennedy. WARNING This book is written by someone who did not make a living from writing.
We brought Wesley Swearingen to speak at Bates College during the mid 1990’s to discuss
his first book FBI SECRETS . In this book he discusses his criminal life as a FBI agent and the laws he broke trying to silence 1st Amendment Rights of Free Speech of civil rights activists and union organizers.
Another book on my list is called EYES TO MY SOUL written by former FBI agent Tyronne Powers
who currently is a Professor at Anne Arundel Community College in Maryland.
Dr. Powers is black and quit the FBI because of the racism within the FBI.
His white FBI supervisors at the FBI tried to kill him when he was writing this book.
His FBI issued car blew up in flames with him inside.
While a new FBI recruit at the FBI Academy fellow white agents dressed up as Klu Klux Klan and burst into his room.
Yes we also brought him to speak at Bates College .
your message is getting old
Is this an attempt to confess his sins?
Any one that can scrape people off the pavement, deal with the dredges of society, make split second life-death decisions, take all the criticism, smile to other people with minor problems and keep their sanity is to be admired. I couldn’t do it.
I turned down an SP Sergeant that was recruiting me years ago for just those reasons (and the awful pay for what was required at the time).
Googins is about the worse example of leadership we have in this state.