GORHAM – Retiring from his job in one month, Gorham Police Chief Ronald Shepard this week reflected on his more than four decades of protecting his hometown.
Shepard, 66, was hired as a Gorham police officer in 1972. In those earlier times, he carried a 6-shot pistol and patrolled miles of country roads in the then largely farming community with no backup officer anywhere around.
“A good ringside seat to the greatest show on earth,” Shepard said on Tuesday, describing his decades on duty with Gorham Police Department.
Shepard will retire as chief on Election Day, Nov. 4, after serving 42 years in the Gorham department.
He is running unopposed on the November municipal ballot for a three-year term on the Gorham Town Council.
Shepard has spent his entire law-enforcement career with Gorham, where he was raised and graduated from high school. He rose up through the ranks in the department to become chief. The American Journal reported on Oct. 4, 1995, 19 years ago this week, that Town Manager David Cole appointed Shepard as the chief.
When he joined Gorham police, he was one of six officers in the department, which was headquartered in one room upstairs over the old fire barn at the corner of South and Preble streets.
“There’s been a ton of changes in town,” Shepard said, remembering the way it was in Gorham.
The town now has 23 full-time, sworn officers and the population of the town, now closing in on 17,000, has more than doubled on his watch.
“We’re the fastest-growing community in the state,” Shepard said in his office in the Gorham Public Safety Building on Main Street.
“I have had the great pleasure of working with Ron Shepard for the past 20 years, including the past 19 while he was the police chief,” Cole said this week.
“Ron was always very professional and has always exhibited a steady and calm composure when something serious was going on.”
Robert Schwartz, executive director of the Maine Chiefs of Police Association, on Tuesday lauded Shepard as a good chief and good police officer. A “well-deserved retirement,” Schwartz said.
A selection process to name Shepard’s successor is expected to begin after the election. The Town Council at its meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 7, likely will name an interim or acting chief.
“I anticipate the council making an appointment at their October meeting with the appointment being effective on Nov. 4th,” Cole said.
The goings-on have been plentiful during Shepard’s tenure, filled with a broad spectrum of crimes. He said he couldn’t begin to count the murders, but reeled off some including a girl killed and thrown into the river at Gambo.
“For a small town, there’s been a lot of homicides,” said Shepard, an FBI academy graduate.
He recalled the unsolved murder of 14-year-old Theresa Duran, whose decomposed body was found in 1984. Shepard said that the townspeople were shocked. Shepard said that a “little shred of evidence” could solve the case.
“I haven’t given up hope,” Shepard said.
For recent years, Shepard, who is an advocate of police working with support groups, cited the rise in domestic abuse cases, sexual assaults and drug-related crimes.
Shepard fired his weapon once in the line of duty. “He (the suspect) had shot at another police officer,” Shepard said.
Police officers, he said, need to anticipate that “stuff can go south. There’s a lot of people who don’t give a damn about human life.”
Crime in Gorham this year included sex-trafficking charges that stunned the community, and a standoff at a fraternity house in downtown Gorham. A string of arsons plagued Gorham two years ago.
Criminal incidents include burglary, thefts, shoplifting, operating under the influence and recent vandalism at the historic Babb’s Covered Bridge. “It’s horrendous,” he said about the damage.
In one change from former times, he said, Gorham officers respond to homes for calls of children out of control. For the homeless on the streets, Gorham police now offer a ride to a shelter.
“We do a lot more social issues,” Shepard said.
On the lighter side of the police blotter, there have been some amusing incidents – like the stolen goat that Shepard located in a house, and another case involving a car loaded with chickens.
A retired Gorham officer and former lieutenant, Wayne Coffin, on Tuesday recalled that he and Shepard had pulled over a drunk driver, who was on his way home following an all-night card game. The driver’s car contained his winnings – chickens.
“You can imagine what the car smelled like,” Coffin said.
Coffin said Shepard took the driver to the station and Shepard ordered him to drive the suspect’s car.
“Stink and feathers – you could hardly breathe,” Coffin said.
Prior to Shepard’s years on duty, someone disguised in some sort of green monster getup reportedly had appeared several times in the West Gorham area. The person, Shepard said, even jumped in and out through the rear doors of a car at a stop sign. Shepard said he knows the identity of the individual, but declined to reveal a name.
When Shepard began duty, the town had only one officer on duty at a time. He said neighboring Windham and Standish didn’t have police departments to provide backup officers.
“You had to learn to talk to defuse things,” Shepard said.
In the old days, the Gorham Police Department, which was founded 50 years ago, had a manual typewriter and received its first Teletype machine in 1972, according to Gorham Historical Society records. There was one Gorham dispatcher on day duty only, with Cumberland County dispatching nights.
Forerunners of today’s cruisers, outfitted with electronic blue lights, had two separate blue lights on cruiser roofs. On the street, cops were nicknamed “double bubble.”
Police in Gorham 42 years ago were armed with radios for communication. Shepard rode with a nightstick he kept handy on a cruiser headrest.
As a rookie officer, Shepard had no radar to detect speeders. Gorham acquired radar in 1973.
Officers today are equipped with computers, handguns with 15 rounds in a clip, Tasers, pepper spray and thermal imaging cameras, along with shotguns and rifles in cruisers. Fire police and the Volunteers in Police Service augment Gorham’s department.
Cole said Shepard has been open to new ideas. “Since he became the police chief, a lot more technology has been incorporated into the Gorham Police Department and its work,” Cole said. “He did an outstanding job and moved the department forward during his tenure.”
Shepard said he would like to think that Gorham Police Department has made a positive difference in people’s lives.
“I don’t think he ever considered being the police chief in Gorham as just another job,” Cole said. “You could always tell he loves Gorham and is dedicated to the community.”
Shepard said he’d do it all again.
“I don’t have any regrets whatsoever,” Shepard said.
Retiring Gorham Police Chief Ronald Shepard works in his office on Tuesday. He’s calling it a career on Election Day. Send questions/comments to the editors.
