ELLSWORTH, Maine — In some ways, a ceremony held Monday morning at City Hall was a homecoming for the city’s newest employee.
Harold V. “Pete” Bickmore is not from Ellsworth, but he is a Mainer who always wanted to be a chief of police in his home state. On Monday, that dream became a reality when, while standing in a crowded second-floor function room, the Cumberland native was sworn in by City Clerk Heidi Grindle as chief of the Ellsworth Police Department.
“I’m very proud to be chief of Ellsworth PD,” Bickmore said after taking his oath of office, surrounded by city officials and police officers from Ellsworth, Maine State Police and some of his former colleagues from the Scarborough Police Department, where he started his career in the early 1980s.
Bickmore acknowledged his fiancee and one of his two daughters in the crowd, and then choked up slightly after thanking his friends for attending his swearing-in.
“Want me to tell some stories, Pete?” a former colleague shouted from the back of the room, eliciting laughter.
“No, I’m good now, thanks,” Bickmore said, drawing more laughter.
After the ceremony, Bickmore said he has yet to sit down with the department’s command staff to discuss specific issues of local concern, but he hopes to focus on topics that are universal in law enforcement: protecting children and senior citizens and combating domestic violence and drug abuse.
The “epidemic” of drug abuse and the crimes that stem from it, he said, are a nationwide problem.
“I want to work with community leaders and health officials to help curb the problem and bust some of these traffickers that are bringing heroin into Ellsworth and into Maine,” Bickmore said.
Bickmore is starting work having just moved back to his home state from Pittsburgh, where he has lived for the past couple of years working in corporate security for the Cleveland Browns NFL football team and Curtiss-Wright Corp.
Prior to his work in the private sector, Bickmore worked for 26 years for the FBI.
During his time with the federal law enforcement agency, he worked in its organized crime and drug sections. He has been assigned to FBI offices in Newark, New Jersey; Boston; Cleveland; Washington; and even Baghdad, where he was the supervisor of the FBI’s first foreign fighter exploitation team initiative.
Prior to joining the FBI in 1987, Bickmore worked in Maine for the Scarborough Police Department for six years, progressing through the ranks of patrol officer, school resource officer/juvenile detective, criminal detective and sergeant.
Having become a volunteer firefighter at the age of 15, Bickmore attended Southern Maine Community College and went on to the University of Maryland, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in fire science before opting for a career in law enforcement.
