Oxford County commissioners on Thursday elaborated on their decision to ask the governor to remove their sheriff from office, saying “no one is above the law.”
After a closed-door session on Jan. 16, the commissioners decided to send a complaint at a later date to Gov. Janet Mills, requesting the removal of Oxford County Sheriff Christopher Wainwright because he had “failed to faithfully and efficiently perform the duties of his office and improperly exercised and acted outside of his legal authority,” according to their meeting minutes.
The minutes state that Wainwright violated laws governing how counties should dispose of property when he improperly sold guns from evidence. They also reference how he allowed men who were not certified as law enforcement to work as school resource officers and berated a deputy who reported the sheriff for asking him to go easy on a woman cited for a traffic infraction.
On Thursday, the commissioners met again and issued a statement explaining more of the reasoning behind their decision, saying they had spent “an inordinate amount of time dealing with, mitigating and resolving mistakes made and crises generated” by Wainwright, a Republican who became sheriff in 2019.
“Those mistakes and crises have cost Oxford County tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars and hundreds of hours that could have been better spent on projects that would benefit all of Oxford County’s citizens,” they wrote. “They have also been a negative distraction from the duties of Oxford County government and have contributed towards morale, turnover and staffing challenges” in the sheriff’s office.
If the sheriff was an unelected department head, the commissioners would have suspended, investigated and potentially fired him, they said. But Maine law dictates that only the governor can remove a sheriff, and county commissioners must initiate the process.
Bills to change that and allow for sheriffs to be placed on administrative leave while they are investigated for unethical or illegal conduct — a commonplace practice for rank-and-file officers — have drawn opposition from sheriffs and failed in the Maine Legislature in recent years.
The commissioners pursued “every other available option over the course of several years” before casting the unanimous vote to ask Mills to remove Wainwright, they said.
“Sheriff Wainwright’s actions have left the Commissioners with no other option than to pursue his removal at this time. It is important to the Commissioners that the citizens and taxpayers of Oxford County know that no one is above the law, including its top elected law enforcement official,” they said.
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 they paid $15,576 to an outside investigator to examine how Wainwright directed one of his deputies to go easy on an acquaintance the deputy had cited for a traffic violation. The sheriff then got angry when that deputy and a second deputy reported the sheriff’s request up the chain of command, according to a recording of the sheriff shared with the Bangor Daily News.
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 law enforcement officers certified by the Maine Criminal Justice Academy — despite giving them guns and badges.
Then in August, after nine months of reporting, the BDN wrote about Wainwright selling dozens of guns from evidence 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 will hold a special meeting Wednesday, Feb. 7, in South Paris to complete a complaint with their attorney to then send to Mills, said Abby Shanor, interim county administrator.
