Two and a half years after hiring a veteran police officer from Rhode Island to lead its small police department, Gouldsboro is advertising to hire a new chief.
Patrick McNulty, a longtime police officer from Rhode Island who was hired in 2021, has been on a leave of absence from the department for several months, helping his adult daughter and three grandsons cope with his son-in-law’s cancer death last year.
“It’s heartbreaking,” McNulty said. “It’s a very sad situation.”
While on leave, McNulty has spent most of his time with family in Rhode Island but has traveled back to Maine for work and has kept in close contact with Gouldsboro officials and with Adam Brackett, the department’s second-in-command, he said. His family continues to need his support, however, making it unclear when he might be able to resume his normal workload.
“Because there is not a quick fix concerning these family matters, collectively we feel the best decision for the town is to advertise for a new chief,” McNulty said. “I will continue to remain active in this position and assist in any transition necessary for the selected candidate.”
McNulty, who also has served as the town’s public safety director for the past year, said he intends to see all of his department’s pending investigations and court cases through to conclusion before he fully retires.
The most significant case McNulty has handled during his tenure in Gouldsboro has been the forgery and theft charges filed against the town’s former fire chief, Tatum McLean. McLean was indicted last summer on criminal charges, but the case remains under investigation, McNulty said. He declined to comment further on the case.
Eve Wilkson, Gouldsboro’s town manager, said that McNulty “hit the ground running” when he started with the town in August 2021.
“Pat has done so much for our community,” she said. “He took on a troubled department which had a high turnover of police chiefs over the past few years.”
Among his accomplishments as chief were standardizing the department’s operating procedures for records and evidence, moving the department to a more secure location, and instituting a neighborhood community police program that identified the needs of the community from mental health issues to assisting the elderly population, Wilkinson said. He also oversaw restructuring of the EMS and fire departments and created the police department’s first K-9 program.
McNulty had been retired for 10 years following a 25-year career in law enforcement in Rhode Island when he came to Gouldsboro.
His experience prior to moving to Maine included serving as detective sergeant with the Providence Police Department, supervisor in the Narcotics and Organized Crime Bureau and the inspector of criminal investigations with the Rhode Island attorney general’s office. It also included working as a full-time task force agent with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and FBI, and heading an investigative task force relating to public and police corruption.
In the years before McNulty was hired in Gouldsboro, the town police department repeatedly was affected by turmoil and turnover, including two town meeting votes on whether to disband the agency.
McNulty’s predecessor, John Shively, resigned in May 2021 after the town had ordered him the prior year to undergo sexual harassment training. Shively was accused of sexually harassing another town employee and, around the same time, the two officers under his command told town officials they had no confidence in him.
McNulty was the third police chief hired by the town in a span of five years. Shively’s predecessor, Tyler Dunbar, cited “a clear lack of political support for the police department from the town government,” when he resigned in 2019.
Dunbar’s predecessor, Paul Gamble, was fired in 2016 from the position after town officials faulted him for using a town credit card to pay for gas in his personal pickup truck, according to a lawsuit he subsequently filed against the town. The next year, Gamble settled the lawsuit with the town for $67,500, the weekly Ellsworth American newspaper has reported.
