Despite complete staff turnover and a change in management within its first year, Bangor police say a new social service team tasked with responding to non-emergency calls is making a difference.
The four-member Bangor Community Action Team — or BCAT — responded to more than 1,000 non-emergency calls since launching in early 2023. The team mostly interacts with people struggling with homelessness, substance abuse or untreated mental illness, but anyone in Bangor can call on the team for help in a non-emergency.
Bangor Police Chief Mark Hathaway developed the program as a more appropriate method for answering non-emergency calls that don’t require a police response, many of which are welfare checks or vagrancy complaints.
The program’s mission is similar to the message of the “defund the police” movement, which advocates for taxpayer funds to be allocated away from punitive policing measures and toward public health and social service providers. The movement became popular in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd.
Welfare checks made up just over one-third of the 1,161 calls the team has responded to since January 2023, according to Sgt. Jason McAmbley, spokesperson for the Bangor Police Department. The other most common calls are public service requests and vagrancy complaints, which account for 26 and 23 percent of the team’s calls, respectively.
In 2023, the police department received more than 36,300 calls.
When someone calls 911 or the non-emergency police line, dispatch will send BCAT for calls in which there is no threat, violence or risk to the individual in need or others.
The team members, who have experience in social work and de-escalating someone in crisis, can direct people away from unwanted behavior, such as tenting on private property, and offer resources to assist them, like connection to a caseworker or transportation to a shelter.
However, the team will only arrange for someone to be brought somewhere if they confirm that person will be welcome and supported at their destination.
“It’s a common misconception that we just send someone away,” said Justin Garcelon, who has been on the team for about six months. “We do a lot of homework to get someone where they need to be.”
Hathaway said the program takes non-emergency calls off the shoulders of the police department, which has struggled with staffing shortages for years and allows officers to “better focus their time on traditional police work.”
The team also cuts down on the number of calls dispatch fields, McAmbley said, because they spend most of their day driving around Bangor looking for people that may need help or situations that could escalate without intervention.
Though the program is housed within the police department and some of the team members studied criminal justice, group members are not police officers. They do not have the power to arrest or issue citations. Police officers don’t accompany the team when it is dispatched, but they can be called later if a situation escalates.
These factors make the team less intimidating to the people they serve, which increases the likelihood that interactions will go smoothly rather than being confrontational, said Nicolette Thurlow, who joined BCAT last month.
“We’ve found people tend to be more receptive to us rather than having police called because they’re loitering on private property,” Thurlow said. “We offer supplies, transportation to shelters or if they have family or friends that they can get transported to, we can help with that. It’s a nice step down from automatically seeing a police officer and being in trouble.”
The program was initially managed by the Bangor Public Health Department, but the police department took ownership of it around September. The switch was made because the hours team members work, and the way the team’s calls are dispatched and recorded, better align with the police department’s capabilities, said Debbie Laurie, Bangor city manager.
Every position on the four-person team turned over within the first year, though Laurie said the city “does not attribute that to any particular reason.”
Despite the turbulence the team has seen in its first year, Laurie said the city believes the program has the potential to continue for years as long as there continues to be support from the community.
Hathaway said the program is still meeting its goals and will continue to evolve and adapt to the city’s changing needs.
“We know we can improve and will be reviewing our data to determine what our next best steps may be,” Hathaway said. “While early goals have been achieved, we have more to do.”
The team does not currently track outcomes of specific people they interact with, but members said they know they’ve made a difference.
On one occasion, Garcelon responded to a welfare check from a woman who was out of state and hadn’t heard from her husband at home in several days.
When no one answered the door, Garcelon went to the back of the house and looked in a sliding glass door where he saw the man lying unresponsive. Garcelon was able to enter the home, determined the man was in diabetic shock and called medical professionals who were able to save the man’s life.
“I go home every day feeling like I did something meaningful and tangible,” said Mackenzie Barnhart, who joined the team in January.
