LEWISTON â Cpl. Eugene Kavanagh is used to being called a racist.
Cpl. Jason Johnson is used to getting flak when he makes simple requests to people, such as to use the sidewalk or to stop screaming in the street in the middle of the night.
Theyâre used to reading smack on social media. And getting public blow-back when they respond to a fight and donât immediately arrest someone.

Eugene Kavanagh
âPeople are complaining,â said fellow Officer Nick Wiers. âThey want us to do certain things to get the city under control, but at the end of the day, people donât respect us, people donât listen, and itâs become so difficult, almost impossible for us to do our jobs.
âWe try to tell people to move along or the park is closed and weâre told to (expletive), weâre told weâre pigs, weâre told weâre racist because weâre simply telling a group of black people to move along.â
Local police â facing increased scrutiny as tensions heat up in the city after two homicides in a month and reports of random gunshots â say theyâre frustrated by a lack of respect in day-to-day encounters by people not really understanding what they do or how much time it takes, by an increase in drugs and violence in parts of the city, and by a staff shortage thatâs dogged the department since the start of summer.
The Sun Journal sat down with four members of the Lewiston Police Department recently to talk about what theyâve been experiencing. The four have been with the department between seven and 19 years. They were candid. Some were hopeful for the future.
ARRESTING MATH
The city has a roster of 82 officer positions that fell to 73 actual people at the start of summer with injuries, training and unfilled positions. Last week, it was 76.
Not, of course, that theyâre all on duty at one time.
âI love asking this of people in the street: How many cops do you think are on?â said Detective Tyler Michaud. ââI donât know, 15-20?â No, we have seven most times.â
In response to increased violence, Police Chief Brian OâMalley added a few more staff to overnight patrols last month. During the day, if one person gets tied up with a call, itâs down to six, for the whole city.
The officers said people donât understand how easy it is to get tied up.
Police responded 67 times to a man with substance abuse-related issues in a recent six-week period, prompting him to be taken to the hospital by ambulance each time, according to Kavanagh. Those type of PCF (person cared for) calls for someone in medical or mental distress âare two-person calls, at least,â he said.
Lewiston has had more than 550 such calls so far this year.
Adding to that, some people play the system. Many times, Kavanagh said, he has had to wait outside a hospital room door at St. Maryâs listening to someone under arrest providing only vague answers to doctors â maybe Iâm pregnant, maybe Iâm not, maybe I want to hurt myself, maybe I donât â hoping the visit stretches out so long that Kavanagh is called away for another police emergency and doesnât take them back to the county jail.
âThe people that we bring, they know what theyâre doing,â Kavanagh said. ââOK, well if I stall long enough, theyâre just going to give me a summons.â Then theyâre going to check themselves out AMA (against medical advice) and then do the exact same things they got arrested for.
âWhen youâve only got five or six (officers) out there and theyâre yelling for cars and youâre just sitting at the hospital with somebody waiting to take them to jail, (instead you) just give them a summons and let them go,â he said. âItâs been done plenty of times.â
If an officer isnât called away, medical clearance can be a 2- to 2½-hour call.
Back in 2000, writing the report for an operating-under-the-influence charge took an hour, Johnson said. Today, thatâs up to three hours that an officer is at a desk instead of on the road.

Jason Johnson
âBecause there are so many things required by the district attorneyâs office for prosecution â videos, lengthy reports, videos from your car, videos from the street â the length of investigations today, I would put out there they far exceed the length of investigations that occurred years ago here,â Johnson said.
Shootings and complicated investigations can take detectives away from other things for weeks, Michaud said.
âInstead of one or two major cases, detectives have three or four cases at a time,â he said. âI have more than that. Weâre working more serious cases than we have in the past, at least in volume.â
All of that time being tied up, along with the reduced roster, translates to less time spent on the streets being proactive and creating a presence, which Wiers argues creates more issues.
âWeâre dealing with a lot of problems that big cities are dealing with ⌠all with seven guys on the road,â he said. âIt used to be that we could make an arrest, solve the problem and move on. But a lot of guys are just saying, âOh well, our hands are tied. If I do this, Iâm going to be pulled off the road to do everything that needs to get done, and now Iâm not going to be able to handle calls, I wonât be available if something truly serious comes in and Iâm going to end up passing along all of my calls on my beat to the next guy.'â
DISTRICT ATTORNEYâS PERSPECTIVE
As police are spread thin and strapped for time, officers say theyâre not feeling supported by city officials or the Androscoggin County District Attorneyâs Office.
Sometimes the paperwork doesnât seem worth it, they said, especially with limited staff, when cases donât end up being prosecuted.
Andrew Robinson, district attorney for Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties, said his office is suffering from the same issues as the Police Department â a huge workload with limited staff.
Last year, two full-time prosecutors dedicated to Lewiston cases split some 1,500 complaints submitted by the department. The recommended annual caseload for each prosecutor is about 350, he said.
âItâs hard to keep up with the volume,â he said. âItâs not that we shrug our shoulders and say weâre not interested (in less serious charges). It really is that if itâs significant, weâre going to prosecute. If it looks like the issues were resolved at the time and weâve got a lot of other cases to focus on, then weâve got to make those calls.â
Robinson also sympathizes with officer complaints about the documentation required for each arrest. He said in a case like a driving-under-the-influence charge, what used to be a two-page report is now four or five, with digital evidence including cruiser videos, Breathalyzer results and more. His office deals with the very same paperwork.
But, he said, âthat paperwork translates into constitutional protections that we are sworn to uphold.â
Robinson said in response to the rising demands, his office established an information-sharing system that uses an encrypted server to allow all parties involved access to the evidence in a case.
âIt is a heck of a lot more work, so theyâre right,â Robinson said. âBut itâs evolved because of technology and the material thatâs so readily available.â
HIGHER WORKLOAD, LESS PAY
Police say the starting pay and benefits in Lewiston do not match those offered in cities with easier workloads, which has amplified tensions during ongoing contract negotiations.
As of this past week, Lewiston hit 25,113 calls for the year to date, compared to 16,019 in Auburn. Given LPDâs current 76 officers and Auburnâs 53 as of last week, Lewiston officers are handling an average of 9 percent more calls. Starting pay for an entry-level patrol officer in Lewiston is $19.80 an hour. In Auburn, itâs $20.27.
Johnson said the types of calls Lewiston police are responding to are âby far more violent.â
âWe donât right now have a package that entices applications to come in here,â Michaud said. âThatâs one of the starting blocks. The community deserves to have good, educated, dedicated employees.â
The current union contract expired June 30, and in an attempt to put the spotlight on a lack of a contract, officers began wearing green police T-shirts last week as an alternative uniform.
Denis DâAuteuil, Lewistonâs deputy city administrator who serves as the cityâs chief contract negotiator, said last week there isnât one particular issue thatâs holding up a new police contract, and that heâs encouraged that at each meeting, the two sides are progressing.
âIâm hoping weâre going to come to agreement here in the near future,â he said.
DâAuteuil said Lewistonâs âimage issueâ is on everyoneâs minds at City Hall. But he believes âit would be a mistake to judge Lewiston â and what Lewiston is about â on whatâs occurred in the last eight weeks. I donât believe it to be a true reflection.â
LACK OF RESPECT ON THE STREETS
The expected stress of police work has been heightened, Lewiston police say, by the fact that itâs rare these days to have an easy interaction with people out on the street.

Nick Wiers
When officers arrive, even in a situation that seems routine, theyâre often met with people unwilling to engage in conversation. Or, people hold up a phone and begin videotaping the encounter.
Wiers, a downtown beat officer of seven years, was born and raised in Lewiston. He said the lack of respect isnât coming from one particular demographic. Itâs mostly the norm from everyone.
âWeâre met with a lot of resistance on a daily basis,â he said. âThe majority of our interactions definitely take some time, and donât go super easy. Youâve got to spend time to try to get people to do what they need to do.â
As for the volunteer citizen patrols starting soon in Kennedy Park, which are meant to add watchful eyes and discourage melees, the officers are skeptical. Despite the good intentions behind the patrols, thereâs an equal chance theyâll add to the policeâs work, Kavanagh said.
âI think theyâre going to get the â(expletive) yousâ worse than we will, honestly,â he said. âWhat enforcement action can they take if a kid says, âIâm not going anywhere, who are you?â We get that all the time: âYouâre not my mother, youâre not my father, you canât make me.â Yeah, actually, we can. We can, but (the volunteers) canât, so theyâre just going to call us.â

Tyler Michaud
Michaud said one of the most frustrating things for police, especially in the social media age, is that they are asked to be âthe first line of defense for the First Amendment, but we have no First Amendment. We have no freedom of speech. We canât really say anything. I canât go on social media and say anything.â
As for the increased scrutiny being placed on law enforcement, Wiers said, âPeople tend to think theyâre a sidewalk lawyer, that weâre always trying to violate their rights. No one is out looking to violate rights.â
He said itâs typical for dozens of people to gather following any police response, no matter where it is.
Wiers was working the night of the Knox Street brawl that led to Donald Guistiâs death in June. When police arrived, there were three officers, and Wiers said they were surrounded by more than 100 people.
âUnfortunately, all we could do was surround the victim and form a perimeter to protect the crime scene and try to render what aid we could to him until an ambulance got there,â he said. âPeople surround us and it creates more incidents. People refuse to listen.â
As for the officers being hopeful about the future?
They say a lot needs to improve. They need more officers, they need more resources to combat the opioid crisis. They say parents should pay more attention to what their kids are doing. Theyâd like to see more prosecutions so it sends a stronger message deterring future crime.
âYouâve always got to hope,â Kavanagh said.
âItâs going to take a lot of work,â Johnson said. But for now, heâs trying to have faith.
âFaith and strong family, for me, has allowed me to endure years of this,â he said. âIt does wear on you. Itâs frustrating to have people repeat the same thing over and over and over again. Itâs the definition of insanity.â
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