A popular Clinton Police Department Facebook page is back, complete with its popular humor and satire.

The department recently toned back its humor after Clinton police officers reported that officers from other unidentified departments emailed and texted them saying the page was unprofessional and they were reticent to work with Clinton because of that.

But when the humorous posts disappeared last month, readers flooded the department with requests to bring them back.

Clinton police Chief Rusty Bell and Mike Connors, the department’s administrative corporal who manages the page, decided to lighten the humor on the departments official page when they first heard about the complaints, but continue with it on another page Connors manages.

Bell then contacted area police chiefs and departments, who told him they have had good relationships with Clinton police and would continue to work with them as they always have and they were not bothered by the Facebook page.

Bell said Friday that many readers urged the department to continue with the humorous posts, which led to the most recent decision.

“We got tons and tons of people that just wanted it back,” he said. “They told us stories of bad situations, of a family member passing, and it helped them. They sent us personal stories and requests for us to go back to making them feel happy.”

“Turns out the agencies were fine,” a Jan. 3 post on the Clinton Police Department page says. “The overwhelming majority of officers were fine. The leaders of the area agencies said, ‘Yeah … keep doing whatever that unhinged thing is.’ It was a very small number of individual grumpy goblins who were being grumpy goblins.”

A joke post on Friday poked fun at “certain coastal agencies” for having different priorities than Clinton police.

The Jan. 3 post goes on to say that a Maine congresswoman — it doesn’t identify who — reached out and told Clinton police not to stop being funny. The town of Clinton is at the northern edge of Maine’s 1st Congressional District, which is represented by U.S. House Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat.

“Also, multiple news stories ran, and we saw the hashtag #IStandWithClintonPD, which is an insane thing to read about a town of roughly 3,300 people,” the post went on. “But people stand with us.”

Private messages from people helped to prompt a return, according to the post.

“People told us the humor helped them breathe on the worst week, month, or even year of their life. People told us they used to distrust police but this page helped them see us as human. That is the job too.”

So, the posts says, police granted readers’ wishes, “Not because we cannot behave, although that is also true, but because we confirmed we can keep it safe and still keep the human side that clearly a lot of people needed.”

Clinton police created the Facebook page in 2013, but about a year ago, decided to include light humor as a way to draw more people in to connect with what Bell described as a community-oriented department. 

About two months ago, Connors increased the humorous posts, which also increased the number of pageviews. Bell said that as of Friday, that number was 34 million in 28 days. The page currently has 54,000 followers.

He said some people thought at first that the department’s announcement it would no longer include humor was part of the humor itself.

“Some of our companion PDs even teased us that we did all that on purpose,” Bell said.

Asked if police have received any negative feedback since the humor returned, he answered without hesitation: “No. Zero.”