Bangor Receives Grant To Hire More Police Officers
Via WCSH (10/15/2009):
The Bangor Police Department is getting a federal grant that will put more officers on the street. The grant will pay the salaries for four new police officers for the next three years.
On any given day, there are usually five police officers patrolling the streets of Bangor. City Council Chairman Gerry Palmer says that’s not enough.
“We’re not a community of thirty thousand,” Palmer told NEWS CENTER. “We have a hundred thousand people out there, and people are having their accidents, they’re going through stop signs and stop lights, we need the law enforcement that we have to meet the needs and service our community.”
The City Council gave the okay for the police department to receive a federal grant to hire four new officers. Those won’t be patrol positions, but Police Chief Ron Gastia says they will be positions he normally has to take officers off the street to fill.
“What this grant will do is allow us to fill those positions without robbing from the patrol side,” Gastia told NEWS CENTER. “So we will be able to maintain our current level of staffing out there.”
The jobs will be a school resource officer, a community relations officer, and two officers for a special enforcement team that will tackle crimes that are happening in trends.