LEWISTON – An hour after Deputy Tim Kachnovich pulled over a wobbly drunk who was driving in circles on Route 4 in Turner, the officer was desperate to return to his cruiser.

“I ought to be on the road,” Kachnovich said.

But technical problems interfered. The Androscoggin County Jail breath tester didn’t work, and the word “failed” lit up. The malfunction sent Kachnovich with his handcuffed OUI suspect to seek out another tester.

It was 1:30 a.m.

At 11 p.m., the Maine State Police patrol left the road for the night. At midnight, Poland’s deputy, contracted by the town to patrol there exclusively, ended his shift and went home.

The only other police officer available to eight Androscoggin County towns – Minot, Livermore, Turner, Greene, Leeds, Wales, Durham and Poland – was Kachnovich’s boss, Sgt. James Jacques.

If something bad happened, Kachnovich might be on his own.

“I think about it every night,” he said.

Before he knocks on a door or approaches a stopped car, he quietly figures where the nearest help is and how long it might take to arrive.

Police from the larger towns, Maine State Police troopers or even deputies from neighboring counties might lend a hand if serious trouble erupted.

No new hires

The worry is that either an officer or a member of the public could get hurt because there are too few deputies working at night.

“The numbers are definitely never in our favor,” said Sheriff Guy Desjardins. “It’s only luck that nothing tragic has happened.”

Desjardins argued for two new nighttime officers when he took over the department in January. The county budget committee instead added one officer to its budget. But the officer was never hired.

The three-member County Commission refused to allow the change, declining even to discuss the matter. Town leaders in Greene, Leeds and Turner have written letters to the commission, requesting that the officer be hired.

Commission Chairman Elmer Berry has accused Desjardins of exaggerating the problem and has promised to conduct his own investigation of the nighttime force, using official documents.

The Sun Journal took its own look at the department.

Desjardins supplied the newspaper with a work schedule for the month of February, showing that two officers worked on any given night. The paper also agreed to ride along with deputies on two nights, from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m.

The paper chose a Friday night and a Monday night.

Both nights were quiet.

Backup uncertain

On the first night – the same evening as a standoff in Auburn that left a woman and her son dead – deputy Kachnovich never received a call.

He stayed busy, though, patrolling Route 4 through Turner and Livermore. He picked up the drunken-driving suspect in Turner. He pulled over speeders and cars with one headlight. He drove past schools and examined businesses up and down the busy corridor, sometimes getting out to check doors or investigate suspicious vehicles.

On Monday, Sgt. Rielly Bryant received one call, zooming from Lewiston to Durham to meet someone who had threatened suicide. The man, reportedly carrying a handgun, never showed up. Bryant went back on the road.

It was the only call he received.

“Some nights it’s like this,” Bryant said, waving at the empty, snowy road. “Other nights, we can’t even keep up.”

He believes another officer is needed. Part of his reasoning is practical. Much of the time, only one officer is on the road late at night while another is doing paperwork.

“The average is: one hour of police work creates two hours of paperwork,” he said. Then there are the people and the distances.

During the day and until about 11 most nights, state police troopers cover part of the county in a call-sharing program that has operated since the late 1990s. After 11 p.m., the troopers are on call.

State police and the sheriff’s office divide the county into two zones, focusing on small towns without their own police forces. The agencies alternate zones each month.

One zone encompasses Livermore, Minot and Turner and has more than 9,000 people. The other is Greene, Leeds, Wales and Durham, which have about 10,000 people. After midnight, when Poland’s deputy goes home, that number jumps to 15,000.

“Even though we split the county in half with the state police, we still have a large area to cover,” said Bryant as he drove through Wales.

On average, Bryant drives about 200 miles during a 12-hour shift, he said.

There are nights when he worries that he’ll be needed on one side of the county when he’s on the other. Some nights, he has found himself on the turnpike, racing to get to a call.

The uncertainty is the worst thing.

“You’re out here doing your best,” he said. “You don’t know where your backup is coming from.”