HALLOWELL — Police staffing has slowly rebounded during the first two months of Police Chief Chris Giles’ tenure after the department dangled dangerously close to a full-blown personnel crisis late last year.

Hallowell Police Chief Christopher Giles says a pay raise for the department has spurred greater applicant interest. Contributed photo

In September, the Hallowell Police Department was down to just two officers after former Police Chief Christopher Lewis left to become a patrolman in Gardiner — becoming the second consecutive Hallowell chief to do so. Lewis held the salaried chief position for just under a year, but he said overtime pay, better facilities and Hallowell’s budgeting fiasco led him to leave for Gardiner.

Giles began his tenure as chief on Dec. 14, amid union renegotiations that raised pay for the entire department by $4 per hour. Giles’ salary increased from $83,186 to $91,500. Almost immediately after the pay raise was finalized, he said, officer applications came flooding in.

“We’d gone from one application in a year to receiving eight over the period of a month,” Giles said.

Now, Giles said, the department has three full-time officers and two “green pins” — certified reserve officers who are still in training but who can work full time for the department under supervision.

The two reserve officers are expected to attend the Maine Criminal Justice Academy during the next fiscal year, Giles said, after which they can become full-time, certified patrol officers. Until then he has to supervise those two reserve officers while they are on patrol, limiting his time to complete administrative work.

But while pay has become more competitive, the department’s office in the basement of Hallowell City Hall — cited by both City Manager Gary Lamb and Giles in recent months as a major barrier to recruitment and retention efforts — has not yet been improved, Giles said.

“Our police station office space (in the basement of Hallowell City Hall) is disgusting and a very negative influence on recruitment,” Lamb wrote in an August memo to the City Council. “It is a damp space prone to flooding and mold, and it looks like zero maintenance has been performed for a great many decades.”

An interior view in August 2024 of the Hallowell Police Department in the basement of Hallowell City Hall. Ethan Horton/Kennebec Journal

City Council members had expressed support over the summer for moving the department into another building nearby, but the idea was nixed among hundreds of thousands of dollars in cuts the council made to try to reduce property tax increases.

Giles said the short-staffed department has continued to use Kennebec Sheriff’s Office deputies and Maine State Police officers to respond to some of Hallowell’s calls when no Hallowell officers are on duty, as part of a rural patrol agreement. The sheriff’s department and state police split coverage of six patrol zones in the county, and deputies assigned to those patrol areas respond to calls within their zone, but only when they are available to do so.

Hallowell is part of Zone 6 of the county’s patrol areas, along with Farmingdale, Gardiner, West Gardiner, Litchfield and Monmouth.

“It has been a weekly occurrence where they’ll handle a situation that takes more than two or three days’ worth of follow-ups or interviews or whatnot, and we end up taking the case from them when we come back on duty,” Giles said.

Giles said he is hopeful the department will return to regular, full coverage by the end of the year — especially given the support he said he has received from City Council members, Lamb and Mayor George Lapointe.

“The city certainly wants to help,” he said. “They want the police department. They appreciate having us here. And I think the numbers show that on days that we’re here and we’re working, you can see that the crime statistics are down. We will get back up to 100% coverage. We’re well on our way to that now.”