PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — The city’s 2017 budget includes funding for a new police detective and patrol officer, positions that police chief Matt Irwin said he thinks will improve public safety and issues with overtime.
After discussion this fall, the Presque Isle City Council signed off on Irwin’s suggestion to add the two positions in next year’s budget, at a cost of a little more than $111,000 between wages and benefits.
The two positions will bring the Presque Isle police force to 17, including the chief, and will help make progress in policing and the department’s overtime, Irwin said.
On the public safety front, Irwin said the addition of the two positions will help the police do more policing in the community, from traffic control to investigation of serious crimes.
“Right now, we’re completely reactive, we don’t have the staff to get on offense,” he said.
The police department has been without a detective since 2012, and has relied on patrol officers to do investigative work as the need arises. “It’s a disjointed effort and doesn’t serve victims justice,” Irwin said.
The detective would focus on a range of crime issues, including robbery and assault, financial fraud and elder abuse, and domestic violence and sexual assault.
“You don’t get a lot of those in the news, because of the confidentiality of those crimes,” Irwin said of domestic violence and sex crimes. “But we have a significant volume of those.”
The new patrol officer, meanwhile, would help alleviate problems with overtime, Irwin said.
Currently, police staff are required to use their holiday and vacation times, or lose them, which leaves the department essentially paying 2.5 times the costs for shifts on a somewhat regular basis.
“If they take that holiday off, I have to pay them for the holiday, then pay someone overtime to staff that,” Irwin said.
The department spends about $155,000 in overtime, and recovers about $100,000 in grants and other revenue, he said.
The new patrol officer will help fill in that gap and reduce overtime, with the new budget also changing the benefits system to have officers being paid for time off they don’t take, Irwin said.
“Between holiday time we’ll save by paying it out and shift coverage we’re not going to have to have,” the department could save between $50,000 and $75,000, he said.
