Presque Isle Police Department patch contest voting continues

 Patch artwork was on display at the Northeastland Hotel as part of the First Friday Art Walk on April 4, with the public getting their first chance to vote for their favorite during that event. Since then, the patches have been displayed at places like the Mark & Emily Turner Memorial Library and the Irish Setter Pub.
“We copied the entries onto uniform paper, so they’d all be the same size. A total of 39 were submitted, with most originating in Aroostook County,” said Chief Matt Irwin, PIPD.
Irwin said the idea for the contest came about because no one at the department could definitely say where the current uniform patch came from or what it represented. That’s when the idea was put to the public to come up with a design that would represent the department and the community.
“If we have a few that stand out from the rest, we may swap out the top designs over time. What’s interesting to me is the concepts. We could adapt some of the concepts, with the artists’ approval of course. Threading may be an issue with some of the more intricate artistic renditions we’ve received,” he said.
He said the goal is to have the patches on public display at various locations through the rest of this month, giving the public more opportunity to vote for their favorite.
“We also have posted them for the month of April on our Pinterest account, where viewers can cast their vote online. Ballots will be combined with online voting, then we’ll take the top eight at the end of April and devise a method to determine the top two or three. City representatives and members of the Presque Isle Historical Society will work with us to choose a winner,” said Irwin.
Irwin said the contest could conceivably result in more than one winner.
“The winner might be determined to be too difficult to reproduce, so we’d go to the next option. The winner will receive $300 — funds obtained through drug forfeitures, not taxpayers. Should the winner not be reproducible, the second-place artist would then have their work used for the patch, thus creating a second winner,” said Irwin.
FMI, visit the PIPD’s Facebook page.