BRUNSWICK, Maine — The Brunswick Police Department will add a nearly 17-foot armored vehicle known as the “Peacekeeper” to its fleet after a vote Monday night by the Town Council. The department will become the eighth police department in Maine with its own armored vehicle.
Council Chairwoman Sarah Brayman cast the lone dissenting vote against allowing the department to accept the vehicle, which is designed to allow officers to more safely get close to a high-risk scene.
Brayman said Tuesday she voted against accepting the vehicle because the town pays taxes in Cumberland County, and the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office already has such a vehicle, as do two cities in the county, Portland and South Portland.
On Monday, Brunswick police Cmdr. Marc Hagan told councilors of several instances in which having such a vehicle of their own could have helped Brunswick police resolve a tense situation more quickly and with less risk to his officers.
In November, when Hagan learned of a standoff with an armed woman on Mere Point Road, his first call was to Capt. Don Goulet of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office, asking that the sheriff’s department send its armored vehicle to the scene to help officers negotiate with the suspect.
Two hours and 10 minutes later, the truck rolled down Mere Point Road, and within minutes, negotiators moved closer to the home — safely — and began to better communicate with the woman.
“That’s a long time to wait,” Hagan said Tuesday. “The sooner we start communicating with someone, the greater the likelihood the situation will turn out in a positive manner.”
The U.S. Department of Defense Defense Logistics Agency contacted the Brunswick Police Department on Feb. 5 to see if the town’s police force wanted the 1989 vehicle, built on a Dodge pickup truck chassis, Hagan said in a Feb. 13 memo.
The vehicle was previously used by the SWAT team of the Bloomington Police Department in Minnesota, Hagan said, and was returned to the Department of Defense when Bloomington purchased a new, more modern vehicle.
It will carry six to eight members of Brunswick’s Special Response Team to calls such as that on Mere Point Road or, more recently, on Old Bath Road, where in January a 39-year-old man armed with a gun allegedly assaulted and threatened a woman.
“We were talking [that night] about having [the Cumberland County] vehicle come out. We couldn’t get close enough,” Hagan said of the cabin at the back of the New Meadows Motel where that incident took place. Before that happened, however, the woman fled and the suspect surrendered.
But Hagan said the October 2014 Mere Point incident was a perfect example of why the vehicle is necessary. Once it arrived from Portland, “We were able to put our negotiators safely in front of the residence, where they were able to make contact and negotiate with the suspect from a position of safety,” he said in the memo. “This simply would not have been possible without Cumberland County’s vehicle, and the outcome could have been far more devastating to [the] suspect and community as a whole.”
The original cost of the vehicle in 1989 was $65,000, according to Hagan.
Hagan answered questions posed by councilors on Monday, assuring one councilor that the vehicle would not be used for crowd control and telling another that if maintenance of the vehicle becomes too costly, it can be returned to the Department of Defense at any time.
He also pointed out that despite recent “political” discussions of the militarization of law enforcement, Brunswick, with a population of just over 20,000, is home to three Bath Iron Works facilities, Bowdoin College and several public school facilities.
“Its deployment would mirror that of our Special Response Team,” Hagan said, “which is to augment law enforcement needs that occur above and beyond the normal course of duty, such as terrorist activity, barricaded criminals, hostage situations [and] other scenarios with a high risk of violence.”
“I think there is a concern about creeping into equipment that might seem less appropriate for a local police department,” Brayman said. “That discussion was certainly brought up by the audience, and I heard [a bit of it] among councilors. But obviously a majority of the councilors felt the Police Department made a good case for it. The councilors trust the recommendation from the Police Department.”