The Brunswick Police Department has made a controversial proposal to spend $380,000 on a new armored vehicle to replace the aging one that’s currently used by its tactical response team.
The agency’s current armored vehicle was first produced for the military more than 30 years ago and donated to the town in 2015. But it has suffered from mechanical problems, and the department says a replacement is urgently needed to respond to violent crimes like the mass shooting in Lewiston last fall.
Opponents have argued that in a town of 20,000 people the vehicle is used too rarely to justify the steep cost, and that the money would be better spent on other things.
The town council will hold a public hearing on the purchase on Tuesday evening.
The agency’s current armored vehicle, called the Peacekeeper, was deployed eight times outside of regular training in 2023. It’s often used during armed standoffs, to allow police to get close enough to communicate with a suspect, according to Brunswick Police Chief Scott Stewart. It has been sent out on occasional manhunts as well.
But it has been towed twice in the past year, and when the department was called to assist in the hunt for Lewiston shooter Robert Card II, Stewart said during an interview he wasn’t sure the vehicle could get the job done.
“We crossed our fingers that [the Peacekeeper] was going to start, that it was going to make its way up there,” Stewart said. “And then once it was there, we didn’t know if it was going to make it back.”
Now, the agency is proposing to replace it with an armored, off-road vehicle designed for law enforcement called the BearCat, which could fit 10-12 officers, according to its manufacturer, Lenco. It would pay for the replacement with funds that have been reserved for vehicle purchases and any grants it can secure.
Brian Higgins, an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who formerly led a county police department in New Jersey, said that armored vehicles can generally play an important role in communities such as Brunswick, serving as rescue vehicles and keeping residents — especially children — safe during active shooter situations.
Higgins noted that it’s important for communities to have strict guidelines ensuring armored vehicles are used for rescue purposes and don’t get overused — a tendency he called the “guillotine effect.”
“France, they built this guillotine and after a while, they’re like, ‘Man this thing’s nice, we gotta start using it,’” Higgins said. “We don’t want that.”
Crime has generally been trending downward in Maine, dropping more than 50 percent over the last decade, though there were more homicides in 2022 than in 2021, according to the most recently available data.
But at least two crimes required a major police response in the area around Brunswick within the last year, including the Lewiston shootings and, last April, the murder of four people in Bowdoin followed by a shooting along Interstate 295.
Brunswick is the only midcoast police force with an armored vehicle, and five other law enforcement agencies, including in Bath, Topsham and Lisbon, have written letters of support for the purchase. They claim the BearCat would also help them respond to violent incidents. The next closest police agencies with armored vehicles are in Portland and Augusta.
Multiple people spoke for and against the proposal during a Brunswick Town Council meeting earlier this month, according to the Times Record.
Councilor Steve Weems said that other towns could chip-in for the cost, given that they would also benefit from the new vehicle. Councilors ultimately voted 8-1 to schedule the public hearing on Tuesday.
The dissenting vote came from Councilor Nathan MacDonald, who said he opposed the purchase and had received 30 emails from constituents who felt the same way.
“It doesn’t make sense financially for us to be going on this endeavor for something that has been used … 12 times in the last three years,” MacDonald said at the meeting.
Another opponent, Peach Cushing, said the funds could instead go to crime reduction or other important causes, such as affordable housing or climate action.
If councilors don’t approve the use of reserve funds for the BearCat, Stewart said he would likely need to look for a surplus vehicle from the military, which might be too large and impractical for use in small Maine communities.
Higgins, from John Jay College, echoed those concerns, noting that military vehicles can be so large they disturb power lines or flip over.
“What happens quite often, especially with the smaller towns, they’ll get denied to pay this money for a BearCat, and then they’ll go to this program with the U.S. government where they get used military vehicles,” Higgins said. “Those are really not appropriate in a small town.”
