Stephen McCausland will retire next week after spending 32 years as the spokesperson for the Maine Department of Public Safety.
The Courier-Gazette reports that Tuesday will be McCausland’s last day on the job.
Before becoming the face of law enforcement in Maine, McCausland spent eight years as the news director for Bath radio station WJTO. During that time, McCausland became familiar with law enforcement through reporting on crime, fires and car crashes, according to the newspaper.
He told the Courier-Gazette that the most memorable story from his time at WJTO came in 1975 when inmates took over the Maine State Prison in Warren, demanding to speak with the media. McCausland and two other reporters, including BDN Rockland Bureau Chief Ted Sylvester, interviewed three inmates who held a guard at knifepoint. The prisoners eventually freed the guard and were arrested.
After his stint at WJTO, McCausland spent a decade as an insurance salesman before the opportunity to apply to become the Department of Public Safety spokesperson emerged in 1988. McCausland had previously applied and been rejected for the post, but in 1988, he finally secured the job, according to the Courier-Gazette.
The Department of Public Safety oversees the Maine State Police, the Maine medical examiner’s office, the Maine fire marshal’s office and several other agencies.
In the past 32 years, McCausland has had a front-row seat to high-profile crimes and disasters, including the 2003 New Sweden arsenic poisonings that killed one and sickened 15 (the case was finally closed in 2006), the Farmington gas explosion last fall that killed a firefighter and injured seven others and the 2011 disappearance of 20-month-old Ayla Reynolds.
Reynolds disappeared while staying with her father in Waterville in December 2011. Police believe Reynolds died from foul play, but her body has never been found. She has since become the subject of the largest criminal investigation in Maine State Police history, and was officially declared dead in September 2017.
“I had hoped I would make the announcement of the case being resolved. But it will be resolved someday,” McCausland told the Courier-Gazette.