BANGOR, Maine — The Bangor Police Department’s recent request to purchase an armored vehicle has sparked a community debate, one that is echoing an ongoing national conversation about militarization of local law enforcement agencies.
This past Monday, Bangor police Chief Mark Hathaway made the case to the City Council’s finance committee that the department should be equipped with such a vehicle to enable officers to better respond to dangerous situations.
Residents, officials and legal experts have since weighed in on whether such a vehicle is needed, as well as the message having one sends to the community.
If approved, Bangor PD would join several Maine law enforcement agencies that have acquired armored vehicles, used primarily as personnel carriers. They include the state police, the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department and municipal police departments in Portland, Brunswick and South Portland, among others.
Bangor City Councilor Ben Sprague, who supports the purchase, was among the first to address the question of military appearance, posting on Facebook after the Finance Committee approved sending a request for an armored vehicle to the full council that a photo of the Army-green armored truck the Portland Police Department had acquired from military surplus was “an example of what we do NOT want in Bangor.”
“The [armored vehicle] the police department is proposing is really a glorified Brinks truck or ambulance,” Sprague said Tuesday. “We don’t want anything militarized. We just want something that will only be used in extreme emergencies.”
Others don’t care what the vehicle looks like, they just don’t want it.
The funds for the new specialized police vehicle would be better spent addressing homelessness and adding mental health and drug addiction services, said Kimberly Hammill of Bangor, one of the audience members who spoke at Monday’s meeting.
“That would be a much better use of our tax dollars than arming ourselves,” she said.
The $208,772 armored vehicle Hathaway is proposing is about the size of an ambulance and painted white, he told the committee. There is enough money within the police department’s current budget, with savings from lower health insurance premiums and lower fuel prices, to pay for the unit outright, the police chief said.
If acquired, the vehicle would join a stable of Bangor PD vehicles including a bomb squad/emergency services vehicle, a special response team vehicle, an evidence recovery team/crime scene vehicle and a suspect transport van, as well as 14 police cruisers and seven other patrol cars used at Bangor International Airport, community services and Bangor Housing Authority, Hathaway said in an email.
Hathaway told the committee that if a standoff takes place in Bangor and an armored vehicle is needed for safety reasons, his department has to call in the Maine State Police tactical team, which has its armored vehicle parked in Augusta, a drive that takes more than an hour and 15 minutes.
Is it needed?
Hathaway cited a Feb. 8, 2015, six-hour standoff on Union Street as an example of a violent incident in Bangor that might have been resolved sooner had the department not had to wait for the state police and its vehicle to arrive.
A Park Street standoff on July 4, 2013, which lasted approximately four hours and rerouted the holiday parade after a man fired a gun from his apartment into the street, is another instance where local officers could have been better protected with an armored vehicle, Councilor Gibran Graham said Monday.
FBI statistics indicate Maine, and the Bangor area in particular, has some of the lowest violent crime rates in the nation but is not immune from the kind of threats that make a case for armored vehicles.
There were 1,700 violent crimes reported in Maine during 2014, the latest data available from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Violent crimes include murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. That works out to 128 violent crimes per 100,000 people. Only Vermont (99.3) had a lower rate. By comparison, New Hampshire averaged 196 violent crimes per 100,000, and Massachusetts averaged 391. The national average was 397.
Bangor’s metropolitan area, which includes all of Penobscot County, recorded 76.9 violent crimes per 100,000 people for 2014, the data shows. Portland and South Portland came in at 127.6 violent crimes and Lewiston-Auburn, which includes Androscoggin County, had a rate of 142.
Maine law enforcement agencies have experienced enough standoffs and potentially violent confrontations over the years to take no chances with personnel safety and have gradually entered the armored vehicle market as a result.
The New York Times recently published a breakdown of military equipment — armored vehicles, assault rifles, night vision goggles, grenade launchers, aircraft — that have been given or sold to communities, including some in Maine, between 2006 and 2014. A Portland television station reported in 2014 that $11 million in surplus equipment had been sent to Maine, including armored vehicles in Cumberland County.
State police acquired a Lenco armored vehicle in 2004, according to Stephen McCausland, Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman. The black, basically bullet-proof truck can carry around 10 people and has an attached battering ram that is removable. The cost was around $300,000, McCausland said.
“It is deployed every time the tactical team is activated, about 50 times a year,” McCausland said.
Portland has two armored vehicles, a 1981 Peacekeeper and a 2012 Bearcat that essentially replaced the older vehicle.
“The Bearcat is deployed with our SRT team on every call out and the last time I checked I think we average five of those a year,” Portland police Chief Michael Sauschuck said in an email.
The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department acquired a vehicle in 2013 designed to carry troops in Iraq and Afghanistan at no cost through military surplus. Sheriff Kevin Joyce described the vehicle, valued at $700,000, as one that can “pretty much withstand the round from any firearm that we could possibly encounter in Maine.”
“We utilize our MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicle any time our tactical team is called out,” Joyce said in an email interview. “We average five to six calls per year, although at times the number of calls can increase to 12 per year. We have only had our MRAP vehicle for about 2.5 years, but in that time have used it for tactical team requests to resolve potential barricaded suspects situations or high-risk search warrants whereby there is a likelihood of violence by the individual(s) against the police or others at the residence.
“The vehicle is only used when a decision is made by the responding police officer(s) or deputies in our case, that they believe an incident is considered high risk and there is a strong potential for violence used by the suspect(s) against police or the public,” the veteran sheriff said. “The vehicle allows our tactical team members to get close to a scene without danger of being injured or killed. Our vehicle provides a high degree of officer protection.”
Cumberland County has a second armored vehicle that has been used for citizen evacuations during times of potential danger.
The sheriff’s department “used the vehicle to evacuate neighbors from a neighborhood in Falmouth after an individual who had killed his mother had barricaded himself inside his parents’ residence for several hours,” Joyce said. “We had to evacuate several neighbors, many of whom were senior citizens. The vehicle provided a safe mode of transportation, as we had to drive past the residence in question.”
Demilitarizing police
Despite occasional violent incidents, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine says that buying an armored vehicle is unnecessary and sends the wrong message to the community, especially given what happened in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.
There, when an armored truck and police officers dressed in tactical gear were used for crowd control amid protests that escalated to violence, photos of the “militarized” police force — a combination of local agencies who partnered to assist — quickly spread over social media and outraged some, who said Ferguson looked like a military state.
“We don’t want to see our police community treating citizens like military combatants; police are here to make the community safer, not treat neighborhoods like war zones,” Alison Beyea, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine, said in an email Tuesday.
She is not alone in her concern about adding armaments at the local level.
After what happened in Ferguson, the New York Times reported that many community and political leaders, including then Attorney General Eric Holder, discussed demilitarizing police.
“At a time when we must seek to rebuild trust between law enforcement and the local community, I am deeply concerned that the deployment of military equipment and vehicles sends a conflicting message,” Holder, who was attorney general until 2015, said in the Times story.
Earlier this week, Hathaway said by email that he understands the public’s concerns but that such concerns are unwarranted, because this vehicle would not change the way the department operates, except that the equipment, if needed, would be parked in town.
“We … have no intent of changing from our community and neighborhood-based practices,” the police chief said. “This will not change our approach to conflict resolution. It will, however, provide safety in instances of potential violence.
“Equipment does not change the character of a police department,” Hathaway said.
Bangor City Council Chairman Sean Faircloth agrees with Hathaway that the proposed vehicle is a prudent investment and does not signal a change in the way the police operate.
“I would be the first person opposed to militarization, after what happened in Ferguson,” Faircloth said. “I think this is distinct from that and appropriate.”
Safety is the major reason behind the proposed purchase that will go before the full council on Monday, he said.
If a suspect is in a building shooting out, “the officers can’t get close enough,” Faircloth said. “The officers are in danger, and perhaps bystanders are in danger. With this vehicle, you’re able to get close to the building, very close, then you are able to [use] tear gas or use some material like that that is nonlethal to get the person out and controlled.”
“Frankly, this is an unfortunate necessity but it is a reasonable necessity,” Faircloth said.