MEXICO, Maine — With a week to go until the Mexico Police Department disbands—at least temporarily—residents anxiously shared fears about future crime and slow response times at a meeting on Tuesday.
“[Without Mexico police] there’s no threat of a police officer coming around a corner at any given moment,” Justin Forbes, who is considering becoming an officer himself to save the department, said Tuesday. “Without that threat, the bad people run free.”
The town’s department will be placed on idle status next Tuesday, Aug. 20, at 6 a.m. After that, coverage will be in the hands of the Oxford County Sheriff's Office, plus whatever mutual aid nearby departments, like Rumford, can offer.
The decision to go dark was made after all three officers announced their departure for different jobs—a result of what town manager Raquel Welch-Day calls “endless overtime" to cover a vacancy in the department that had persisted for more than a year.
“They have families, they are tired,” Welch-Day said in a statement Tuesday. “They all stressed their decision had nothing to do with the chief, the select board, or finances.
The chief, Roy Hodsdon, also left the department—officially retiring Tuesday after 27 years on the force, which town officials say recently included a demanding schedule covering for the vacant position.
Now, all that will remain of the department is James Theriault, the former Oxford County sheriff, who will take charge of Mexico police records for use by the district attorney’s office.
“I just fear for the people,” Theriault said.
However, Theriault is confident that he will be able to hire a new cadre of officers to relaunch the Mexico Police Department “within a year.”
“We’re just going to have to do a lot of recruiting,” Theriault added. “I do have some contacts from my 42 years of experience. We’re just going to have to see what comes from it.”
A CONCERNING TREND
Mexico is far from the first town in the Maine to shutter its department for staffing issues. Earlier this summer, the Aroostook County community of Washburn did the same, following Van Buren and Limestone before that.
Neil McLean, who serves as district attorney for Oxford, Androscoggin, and Franklin counties, sees staffing issues all around, from cops to prosecutors.
“We’re seeing this in most towns from the largest … in Lewiston to rural areas,” McLean said.
However, McLean is hopeful that in Mexico’s case, with sheriff’s deputies and mutual aid, the rule of law won’t wane in the community.
“Nobody should think that this is the place to commit crimes,” McLean said, “You’ll have Rumford PD, you’ll Oxford County Sheriff’s Office to dispel that notion.”
Even though many residents, like Forbes, fear a rise in crime as a result of Mexico patrols stopping, research would suggest that impacts of the change in service will be less harsh than expected.
A 2022 study from Professor Richard Boylan at Rice University found that disbanding local police departments “does not appear to impact overall crime.”
“On average, the people who lose their police departments end up doing fine,” Boylan said Tuesday. “[In] terms of crime which is reported to the FBI, there's not much change.”
Even so, in the town of Mexico the consensus is clear: we want our department back.
As Richard Philbrick, a town selectman puts it, “We’re not throwing the towel away. We’re going to keep fighting and we’re going to have a department.”