OLD ORCHARD BEACH — Police Chief Elise Chard has the gift of the long view. Come fall, she will mark 30 years as a law enforcement officer in the busy seaside community of Old Orchard Beach and 35 in her career.

She knows the community well.

Named interim police chief just before Memorial Day at the retirement of longtime chief Dana Kelley, and then appointed chief  just before the July 4 holiday, Chard worked her way through the ranks from officer to detective to corporal to sergeant. She was named a captain in 2017.

Chard said she hopes to modernize the department and noted that effort began with Kelley, who hired a civilian social services navigator to help people in need find resources. While police officers deal with individuals on an initial basis, they typically do not have the time or resources to follow up, she said.

“It wasn’t fair to those people we weren’t following through,” she said. Now, with the navigator on board, there is follow up.

Chard has other initiatives in the offing — including beefing up training.

“The more training an officer gets the better off they’ll be,” she said. As well, Chard is looking for the department to be more self-sufficient in that regard and is using in-house officers who are certified to teach to provide training.

She is working on digitizing policies and procedures and other matters that currently exist on paper.

Chard is the first female police chief in the town she and her husband, a police sergeant in nearby Scarborough, call home. The couple has two daughters.

She grew up in Lisbon and became interested in police work as a teen.

“My high school had an Explorers program,” she explained. She joined and was hooked.

“I knew that’s what I wanted to do,” said Chard. She became a reserve officer with the Lisbon Police Department and joined that agency full time after graduating from the University of Maine Augusta. After a couple of years, she transferred to what is now called the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency.

Chard became a police officer at a time when there were few women in the industry in Maine. She said she was never treated differently than her male counterparts either in Lisbon, with the state drug agency, or in Old Orchard Beach

“Old Orchard Beach has always been a very progressive department,” said Chard.

She is chief in a very busy town. Old Orchard Beach is booming in the summer, as an extremely popular tourist destination. But, Chard pointed out, these days it is busy year around. Sure, the tourists are not here in February, but others are, like people occupying winter rentals.

“Fall is becoming more touristy” she said, unlike her early days with the department, when the motels and shops were boarded up soon after the summer season ended.

“This is a unique community,” she said. There is summer, the fall season, the winter rentals from November to spring, plus an aging year-round population. In all, it adds up to an estimated 18,000 annual calls for service; Chard said, about half occurring during the summer season.

There were a couple of new positions in the budget this year, bringing the total to 24 sworn officers, plus three vacancies for a total of five slots to fill. It is a circumstance relatively common these days in many municipalities as young people shy away from shift work, long hours and the dangers involved.

Still, Chard’s desk is sporting five blue file folders representing conditional offers that were accepted by the candidates for the five vacancies. Even though that may sound like the end of the hiring process, there is more. The offers are based on candidates successfully passing background checks, polygraph, and psychological and physical exams. If all pass and the hiring process is complete, the vacancies will have been filled. New officers who have not been to the Maine Criminal Justice Academy for an 18-week training will be scheduled to do so, and there is a lengthier period of field training —  a total of 22 weeks with another officer before new hires are considered ready to patrol on their own.

As for the law enforcement profession itself, she said, “you’re either in it all the way or you’re not; you have to be passionate about it to stay.”

Chard is passionate.

Chard said all those years ago when she was just starting her career, she had not expected to devote all of it to a municipal department. Doing so, she said, gave her opportunities — like becoming a detective two years into her job in Old Orchard Beach — and then progressing up the ladder.

“I’ve had great opportunity here. It is a great community,” said the Old Orchard Beach police chief. “I have no desire to go anywhere else.”

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