PARIS – Since 1993, no new road patrol officer’s position has been added to the Oxford County Sheriff’s Department. Nine full-time deputies and one detective, from then to now, have been enforcing the law in a huge geographic territory in a county of about 54,000 people.

“We do the best job we can with what we have to work with. But enough is enough,” wrote Cpl. Timothy Ontengco, president of the Oxford County Deputies Association, in a recent letter to Oxford County commissioners and the county’s budget committee.

“We are getting burned out because of our case load is so large. We need help,” Ontengco said. “Oxford County citizens deserve better service and this can only be accomplished by adding more road patrol deputies.”

Ontengco urged commissioners and the budget committee to support a proposal by Oxford County Sheriff Lloyd “Skip” Herrick, who wants to add one full-time patrol deputy annually for the next three years.

This year’s salary cost to add a deputy would be about $28,000, not including holiday pay or fringe benefits. A new cruiser would add another $18,000 to the cost.

Herrick said the Sheriff’s Department has “done everything in our power to be proactive and efficient in providing law enforcement services” with a nine-person road patrol staff. Of those nine, three are corporals, and three are sergeants.

A call sharing agreement the county has with Maine State Police helps, “but we are again faced with an insurmountable amount of crimes to investigate and calls for service to respond to,” Herrick said.

During 1997, the sheriff’s office investigated 660 serious crimes such as rape, robbery, assaults, burglaries and thefts.

“I feel that Oxford County is playing Russian Roulette” by having so few deputies, Ontengco said.

“Whether it be a responding deputy getting into an accident because of the travel time, or a deputy or other police officer getting hurt or killed because of lack of county back up, this is a safety issue for the deputies and citizenry,” he added.

Ontengco noted that in York County, the number of road patrol deputies has risen from 13 in 1996 to 27 now. Cumberland County has roughly 50 patrol deputies.

He recalled an incident in January in South Hiram when an elderly lady was grabbed in her home and held at gunpoint while two suspects stole prescription drugs and money. When the call came in, Ontengco – the closest Oxford County unit – was in Paris, and it took him an hour to respond,

“Thankfully the elderly lady was not seriously injured,” he said.

Towns like Hiram, Brownfield, Denmark and Porter have very little police coverage, he said.

“Down in southern Oxford County it is literally like the Wild West.”

Herrick said adding a new patrol deputy a year for the next three years is the minimum needed to allow the department to have adequate manpower.

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