The Oxford County commissioners voted unanimously Wednesday morning to send a complaint to the governor, asking her to remove their sheriff for acting outside of his legal authority.
“We haven’t taken this lightly,” David Duguay, chair of the commissioners, said after announcing the decision. “It’s a very sensitive issue.”
Their 10-page complaint with evidence attachments will be forwarded to Gov. Janet Mills and then to the sheriff Wednesday afternoon, said Amy Dieterich, an attorney for the county.
In response, Sheriff Christopher Wainwright said he has acknowledged his mistakes but does not believe they merit removal. He is not resigning.
“I am eager to engage the process of review with a neutral arbitrator of fact and law — the Governor,” he wrote in a statement Wednesday morning.
A sheriff is elected and cannot be suspended or disciplined by commissioners. Under Maine law, sheriffs can only be removed by the governor.
The commissioners’ decision comes after months of turmoil with the sheriff and three investigations into his conduct by the Bangor Daily News.
In response, the commissioners have ordered two outside investigations into his decisions to sell guns from evidence without telling county finance officials or recording the transactions, and his berating of a deputy who reported him after the sheriff asked him to go easy on a case.
The Maine Criminal Justice Academy also investigated Wainwright last year for sending armed, but uncertified, men into schools as school resource officers. It issued him a letter of guidance, reminding him that it can be a crime to carry a firearm on school property without a badge.
The commissioners previously deliberated in May 2023 whether to ask the governor to remove Wainwright from office, but they decided against it.
Their decision came after Wainwright directed one of his deputies to go easy on an acquaintance the deputy had cited for a traffic violation involving an open container of alcohol. The sheriff then got angry when that deputy and a second deputy reported the sheriff’s request up their chain of command, according to a recording of the sheriff shared with the BDN.
“I don’t work for the county commissioners, and I don’t work for the chief deputy. You all work for me. And if I tell you not to write any fucking tickets ever again, you won’t write any tickets ever again. You know what I’m saying? That’s the sheriff. It’s a constitutional office,” he said.
The sheriff later apologized, saying he had been unprofessional and overstated his authority, and that he had violated Maine’s law enforcement code of ethics by asking his deputy to show favor toward someone.
Soon after the commissioners’ deliberation in May, the BDN reported that Oxford County had been approving contracts with Hiram-based School Administrative District 55 and Rumford-based Regional School Unit 10 for school resource officers but not sending certified law enforcement officers for years — despite giving them guns and badges.
Then in August, after nine months of reporting, the BDN wrote about Wainwright selling 52 guns and gun parts from evidence to J.T. Reid’s Gun Shop in Auburn without getting approval from the county or the original owners of the guns, and without recording the deals on paper.
For many of the guns, the sheriff’s office didn’t even have a record of their origins, raising questions about whether the sheriff had the authority to sell them at all given legal restrictions on disposing of evidence.
The commissioners asked attorney Maria Fox to conduct an administrative investigation. While her investigative report has not been released, the commissioners said they concluded that the sheriff had violated the law and county policies.
They determined there is the potential that Wainwright violated Maine’s criminal code for theft when he sold firearms from evidence without first contacting the owners.
In other instances, when police do not know the owners or property remains unclaimed, Maine law dictates that they advertise it in a newspaper. If no one claims it within five months, it may be thrown out, donated, surrendered to the person who found it or sold to the highest bidder at a public auction.
Instead, the sheriff agreed to trade the guns to a dealer in exchange for credit toward the purchase of other firearms for the sheriff’s office — though it’s not clear exactly what the office received because there is no paperwork.
Maine law also mandates that the county administrator, not the sheriff, act as the purchasing agent for county departments.
The sheriff also faces a lawsuit from his former clerk, who alleges that he violated her rights when he tried to fire her for criticizing him and reporting misconduct in the agency.
Jean Kelly of Hartford came to hear the commissioners’ decision on Wednesday. She started work in the sheriff’s office in April 2018 and was put on administrative leave in December 2019 before resigning in May 2020.
“It’s high time the commissioners open their eyes and pay attention to what’s going on,” she said. “You could excuse one thing, but when it happens over and over and over, it’s kind of hard to excuse.”
She said Wainwright doesn’t like people standing up to him.
“But if nobody stands up and says anything, then it just continues,” Kelly said. “And I’m not someone that wants that to happen.”
Some of Wainwright’s employees have opposed his removal. In a letter signed by 10 deputies, they said the sheriff has been “repeatedly at the mercy” of the commissioners who have “done nothing but hinder our ability to protect and serve our communities” by failing to approve additional funding for wages and staff.
Some deputies work 80 hours a week to cover the vast, rural county “because we lack the resources we need to effectively hire and retain quality law enforcement officers,” they said.
In response, Duguay said the commissioners approved the precise budget for the sheriff’s office that Wainwright presented to them.
This is the second time in recent years that Oxford County has asked the governor to remove its sheriff. In 2017, the commissioners asked then-Gov. Paul LePage to remove former Sheriff Wayne Gallant from office, but Gallant resigned before LePage made a decision. Evidence revealed Gallant had sent nude and graphic pictures of himself to members of the community and his staff.
Read Wainwright’s full statement:
“I am aware that the Oxford County Board of Commissioners intends to publish their complaint against me today, together with the reports they purport to rely on. At each turn, I and others have requested to see this information, but the Board has secreted the information from disclosure or scrutiny.
“As a matter of public record, I have acknowledged the mistakes that I have made while in Office and apologized for same as appropriate. But let me be clear, there is nothing about my conduct in Office, personally or professionally, that merits my removal. I remain eager to engage the process of review with a neutral arbitrator of fact and law – the Governor.
“Perhaps in time, my personal reputation will recover from the Commissioners’ reliance on rumor and innuendo; however, as an elected public figure, with nothing to hide, that my personal reputation remains secondary to my professional commitment to the integrity of the Office of Sheriff and preservation of the dignity of that Office, in Oxford County, and beyond.
“With these priorities in mind, I will continue to carry out my duties and obligations to my Office, Oxford County Sheriff’s Office employees, the institution of the Office of Sheriff, the electorate, and others in a dignified and professional manner, by not publicly commenting on shameful mischaracterizations of my time in Office outside the process to be determined by the Governor.”
