PORTLAND — Two and a half years ago, Michael Sauschuck was one of 10 Portland police lieutenants, 13th in the chain of command.
Now, at the age of 41, he’s about to become the chief of Maine’s largest municipal police force.
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After a five-month search that evaluated more than 80 candidates from across the country, City Manager Mark Rees decided that the best person to lead the Portland Police Department was already doing it.
Rees announced Tuesday that Sauschuck, who had been acting chief since James Craig left for Cincinnati in August, was his choice to lead the department on a permanent basis. Rees will seek the City Council’s confirmation of Sauschuck on Monday.
Sauschuck’s new job, fighting street crime, drugs and nascent gang activity in Maine’s biggest city, couldn’t be more removed from his hometown of Madrid. The rural hamlet in Franklin County has so few people that it dissolved as a town in 2000 and became part of the state’s unincorporated territories.
Sauschuck said, “It is a small town, to say the least,” but he noted that the tight bonds he formed with neighbors helped shape him as a young man. “You build a strong work ethic and strong relationships with the people you grow up with.”
Sauschuck’s route to Portland took him around the world. As a student at Mount Abram Regional High School, he was drawn to the Marine Corps and its ethos of professionalism and teamwork.
He served from 1988 to 1993, at one point protecting U.S. embassies in Moscow and El Salvador. He honed his communication skills. He also worked with law enforcement, and decided it would be a good post-military career.
He studied criminal justice at the University of Southern Maine and worked as a reserve police officer in Old Orchard Beach. He was hired for Portland’s force in 1997.
In 1998, Sauschuck was given an award for heroism, after he and then-Sgt. Ted Ross ran into a burning building on Alder Street before firefighters arrived and got the residents out safely.
Sauschuck worked on the force’s special reaction team and led the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency’s Portland task force, rising through the ranks.
When James Craig was hired as chief in 2009, he began looking for a second in command.
“I asked a cross-section of officers throughout the department, ‘Who do you all consider a leader here?’ I kept hearing this name, ‘Mike Sauschuck,’” Craig said Tuesday. “I didn’t even know the guy. He was just out doing the work.”
The department went through a series of changes under Craig, and as assistant chief, Sauschuck was the point person for implementing several of them. “He really is what I consider the future of policing,” Craig said.
The selection of Sauschuck, an internal candidate, as chief indicates that city leaders believe the department is headed in the right direction. But Sauschuck said he will not be a status quo, stay-the-course chief. “We will continue to be a progressive department,” he said.
He said he hopes to increase the number of foot beats in the city, and plans to have a member of the command staff ride with an officer each week on a rotating basis, to keep in touch with the city, day-to-day policing and the people who do it. The program was started under Craig, at Sauschuck’s suggestion.
Sauschuck plans to attend a neighborhood association meeting each month, rotating through the city, to hear residents’ concerns and discuss the department’s priorities.
Building relationships, communicating openly and honestly, working hard and paying attention to details are all strengths of Sauschuck’s, said people inside and outside the department.
Eric Nevins, president of the Police Benevolent Association, representing front-line officers, said Sauschuck is generally well regarded and officers are pleased to have leadership in place so the department can move forward.
“I think there’s going to be some political challenges, being as young in his career as he is,” Nevins said.
He said he hopes Sauschuck will be able to do what he thinks is best for the city and the department, without political interference.
Sauschuck is a good leader, said Cmdr. Vern Malloch, who was one of five finalists for the chief’s job. “He practices transparency in all of his interactions I see with the community and with his co-workers in the police department.”
He’s level-headed and compassionate, and has been active on the department’s peer support team, which helps officers who are having trouble coping with the stress of the job, Malloch said.
Sauschuck said real police work is not the TV version, with car chases and cops and robbers.
“I realized very early on it is about communication skills and building relationships,” he said. “That’s really where the rubber meets the road.”
As city manager, Rees said, he has had the benefit of watching Sauschuck run the department for the past six months. He was pleased with what he saw, including how Sauschuck handled the potentially explosive issue of the Occupy Maine encampment in Lincoln Park.
Rees said Sauschuck worked with several city departments to deliver a coordinated and measured response. “He made sure his officers treated the occupiers with the respect appropriate, given the delicate situation we were in and still are in.”
John Branson, the attorney representing Occupy Maine, spoke highly of Sauschuck’s selection.
“We’ve certainly had our disagreements about certain things, but I think he’s handled himself with dignity and professionalism,” Branson said. “He tried to keep (Lincoln Park) a safe place for both the occupiers and others.”
The Portland Police Department has 162 officers covering a city that has low crime relative to national rates – roughly 50 crimes per 1,000 residents – though drug use and associated violence and property crime continue to drive the city’s crime statistics.
Rees has proposed an annual salary of $95,000 for Sauschuck, whose wife, Detective Mary Sauschuck, is a member of the department’s intelligence unit.
Staff Writer David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at: dhench@pressherald.com
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