PORTLAND, Maine — The University of Southern Maine’s new police chief, Grainne Perkins, is well qualified for the job.
Maybe a tad too qualified.
Perkins spent nearly 20 years investigating serious, violent crimes — including murder and rape — in her native Dublin, Ireland, before joining the Seattle Police Department, where she helped investigate more than 20,000 complaints against the force in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
Between those two gigs, Perkins earned two master’s degrees in Ireland, plus a criminology Ph.D. in South Africa, and also worked a stint with the international crime-fighting organization INTERPOL.
With that kind of high-profile, international resume, Perkins likely could have gotten a job anywhere.
But she chose USM, where she supervises just eight sworn officers and where serious crime on its three campuses is rare. The reason, for Perkins, is fairly simple.
Teaching.
Perkins plans on lecturing students in criminology or anthropology as an adjunct professor, starting in the fall, while also running public safety on the institution’s three campuses.
Having the chance to teach, while keeping the peace, is important to her.
“I learn by teaching,” Perkins said. “You can stand up there and think you know something about a topic, and a student will ask one question, and you’ll think, ‘I never thought of that before.’ It really stretches your thinking.”
That philosophy of ongoing inquiry and dialogue is an outgrowth of her overall approach to police work, in general. Perkins believes that the best way to craft police agency policy is to involve the community, asking them what they want and what they need, rather than telling them.
“Her philosophy really resonates with this generation of college students,” said Adam Tuchinsky, dean of USM’s College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. “She knows that police can only preserve the safety of the community with the consent of that community.”
Tuchinsky said Perkins is a good fit because everyone at a university has a teaching role, from custodians to professors, and even law enforcement personnel.
Perkins is already putting this mindset to work at USM.
Perkins has funding to equip her officers with body cameras. What she lacks is a policy on their use. Instead of writing the rules herself, Perkins is looking to involve the campus community.
“Last week, I pitched to the dean and the president,” she said. “Let’s have a debate. Let’s get the criminology department, let’s get the law school. The students can debate the topic of body-worn cameras and our policy can speak to those concerns.”
The cameras will have to be switched on during any high-stakes, likely violent confrontation, but those situations are rare at USM.
Between 2019 and 2021, there were zero aggravated assaults, burglaries, robberies or homicides reported on campus. Last month, there were just six complaints filed with the USM Police Department. All were minor.
USM is one of three University of Maine campuses with a sworn police force. The others are in Orono and Farmington.
Perkins’ mother and all of her siblings are nurses. But Perkins — whose first name comes from the famous female 16th-century Irish pirate Grainne Ni Mhaille — made up her mind to become a police officer when she was nine years old. That year, she wrote an essay on her decision.
Dated October 1982, one-page school paper is framed and hanging on her office wall. It describes her imagined, future life as an officer.
“My uniform is very neat,” it reads, in part. “I have to see if some people are captured. Maybe some people are stealing jewelry.”
Perkins’ first assignment with Ireland’s national police force in 1998 had her interacting with the community. On that job, she’d go into elementary school classrooms and talk to students about police work and how crimes get solved.
After that, Perkins moved up the Dublin-based police ranks over the next 17 years, helping to pioneer the force’s restorative justice program and also working for a year on international crimes with INTERPOL.
Then, her New Hampshire native husband got the chance to work in South Africa. Perkins used the opportunity to take a professional break and earn her Ph.D. at the University of Cape Town. Perkins’ published thesis came from 900 hours studying the risks and dangers encountered by members of the South African Police Service as they went about their daily routines.
After that, her Ph.D. in hand, the couple moved to Seattle in fall 2019, where Perkins taught at a local college and worked in the Office of Police Accountability. When large public protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder turned into violent clashes with police, Perkins helped investigate more than 20,000 complaints against the force.
“We went from 30 investigations a week,” Perkins said. “Then, the first two weeks after the riots, we did 19,500.”
There were so many, Perkins and her colleagues had to get creative, using internet search technology to help aggregate the complaints, grouping them by incident.
Perkins interviewed for the USM job last fall and took it earlier this spring. She’s already run a half marathon in Maine and joined the board of directors at the Maine Irish Heritage Center.
Tuchinsky said Perkins is likely USM’s first police chief with a Ph.D and a desire to teach.
“I’d have to check the records,” he said, “but can’t believe she isn’t.”
