By Mark LaFlamme,Staff Writer
Lt. Tom Avery calls it a career as Lewiston cop

LEWISTON – Diane Avery often went looking for her husband only to find him downtown picking up hookers or buying drugs.

It didn’t rattle her much.

Tom Avery was the kind of cop who liked to get in the middle of things while fighting crime.

Retiring this week after a career that spanned nearly a quarter of a century, Avery comes away from the job with a lifetime of stories to tell.

“I was kind of a magnet for the crazy things that happen,” Avery said. “I’ve seen some things happen that you won’t see anywhere else, in the real world or on TV.”

His fellow officers describe him as a cop who knew everyone and who was never completely off the job.

“Tom has great instincts,” said Deputy Police Chief Michael Bussiere. “He’s the kind of guy who if he wasn’t directly involved in things he wanted to be. He liked to get involved and he was always willing to help out. The guys on the street respect that.”

Lt. Don Mailhot, who joined the force in 1982 – the same year as Avery – said his colleague just can’t help it.

“He’s got blue and red lights in his blood,” Mailhot said. “Even after he was a sergeant, a detective, a lieutenant, he was always running to calls. He’s a public servant par none. He just wants to help people.”

Love of his life’

Diane Avery said her husband has great passion for his work. She was an emergency dispatcher when they met. He was a cop already. He’s been a cop as long as his wife has known him.

“It really is the love of his life. He was always happiest being out in the middle of things, rather than sitting behind a desk,” she said. “He is just so, so committed, whether he’s on duty or not. We can be driving down the road, and he’s not paying attention to anything I’m saying. He’s looking around and wondering what’s going on.”

Avery, who ended his 24-year career on Wednesday, shrugged off the accolades. He mostly likes the stories.

Like the one about the hookers who almost robbed him at knife point.

As part of the Special Enforcement Team that focused on vice, Avery was sometimes asked to don street clothes and drive around in a beat-up truck until prostitutes approached him. One evening, a young lady asked if she and her friend could get in the truck. Eager to make a pair of arrests, Avery let the young women in.

He took them to the police station, where one later confessed they had planned to use a knife to rob him. Those were the days when police did not have discreet radios and microphones at their disposal.

“It was just me and them,” Avery said.

He has also had problems with prostitutes calling him at home for help with bail issues. That’s what happens to a police officer who knows everybody.

“It’s a little awkward when your wife gets a call like that,” Avery said in his typically understated manner.

Happy and sad

Avery also recalled a Memorial Day parade years ago when the Special Enforcement Team learned drug dealers were coming to the city from Boston. Police pinned down the time and made arrangements to interrupt the sale. But first they had to direct thousands of people at the end of the parade and then get the barricades down. With the grunt work done, they raced over to Auburn and pulled over the drug dealer in front of a restaurant.

“We got him into custody,” Avery said, “and a large group of people who had been inside the restaurant broke into a round of applause.”

As is the way with police work, every happy memory is matched by at least one bad one. Avery has seen more than his share of children killed through violence, in accidents and from suicides. He’s seen the aftermath of more murders than he wishes to remember, and he’s seen a few of his peers died along the way, too.

On July 23, 1988, Avery was a six-year member of the force. He remembers coming to work that day and learning that Officer David Payne had been killed in an ambush. Other officers were still looking for the shooter in the woods along River Road.

“I remember the panic in the police station,” Avery said. “I went out to guard the perimeter and I remember standing in the woods. We still didn’t know where the shooter was. It was surreal.”

Avery is now going to work as a pharmacy inspector for Maine Department of Public Safety. The irony is not lost on him.

“Instead of being involved in illegal drug trafficking,” he said, “now I’ll be involved in the legal end of things.”

His wife is both relieved and sad that her husband won’t be donning a police uniform every day.

“When he told me he was retiring, I started crying,” she said. “I’ve never known any life with him but that one.”

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