For the past five years, against a national backdrop of rising drug overdoses, violent crime and public reckonings with racial bias, the top position in Portland’s police department has been a revolving door.

After Michael Sauschuck finished his six-year stint as Portland chief of police in the summer of 2018, Frank Clark lasted two years before leaving for a job in the private sector. Three interim or acting chiefs, including the recently departed F. Heath Gorham, have since taken turns stewarding Maine’s largest municipal department without the security of a permanent position.

Incoming Chief Mark Dubois promises that pattern will stop with him.

Since becoming chief of police in Braintree, Massachusetts, in 2019, Dubois has earned rave reviews for his collaborative leadership style and his ability to calmly navigate the department through a series of high-profile crises.

Dubois, 56, will be sworn in Friday and take the helm in Portland. He will earn a salary of $165,000. His mission, he says, is to set the department on a course for success by cultivating a positive workplace culture and grooming the city’s next generation of police leaders.

“Chief Gorham by all accounts did a great job. But not being permanent chief, it makes things challenging,” Dubois said in a recent interview. “You’re keeping the place afloat, but you’re not really making improvements. What I really bring more than anything is far more long-term stability.”

Gorham said in June that he did not apply for the permanent job.

‘SOMETHING OF A LOCAL’

Communities across the country are struggling to recruit and retain police chiefs, said Ed Tolan, executive director of the Maine Chiefs of Police Association. He said the problem is especially dire in Maine, which has a relatively small pool of in-state candidates and typically offers salaries that can’t compete with similarly sized departments in states like Massachusetts.

After planning to review candidates in March, city staff delayed the process due to a dearth of quality applicants. City Manager Danielle West, who hired Dubois last month, said few Maine officers applied for the position.

As an outside hire, Dubois said he knows he’ll have to work to earn the trust of Portland residents. But even though he’s spent his 32-year career in law enforcement in Massachusetts, he said he jumped at the opportunity to come to Portland and pushed back on the idea that he’s an outsider.

“I feel like I’m something of a local. I’ve owned a house here for 20 years,” he said, referencing the Old Orchard Beach summer home he and his wife bought in 2004. Last year, the couple completed construction on a new house in the same location, where they plan on living year-round.

Dubois said he regularly follows Maine news and has for years tracked the happenings of the Portland Police Department – something West said stood out during the search process.

“He knows Portland. He knows our issues,” she said. “I really think he does have what we’re looking for in that regard.”

‘THE FULL PACKAGE’

West also praised Dubois’ resume, which lists more than a decade as a police chief in Maynard, Massachusetts, and then Braintree, training from the FBI National Academy and a law degree from the New England Law School, which he earned in 2001 after tacking night classes onto his day job as a police officer. He said that training, which he continues to use as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve’s JAG Corps, has helped him in several ways as a police chief, from understanding employment law during union negotiations to earning the respect of district attorneys.

His appointment in 2019 as chief in Braintree – just sound of Boston, about 40 miles from Maynard – initially drew criticism from some officers who argued the department should have hired in-house, according to a report in the Boston Globe. But after Dubois helped revamp the department and navigate a series of challenges, including a shooting that injured two officers and killed a K-9 unit, his co-workers in Braintree said he earned their admiration.

“I don’t know many, if any, people who have a bad word to say about him. It’s just a testament to how he conducts himself, the way he treats people,” Deputy Chief of Operations Tim Cohoon said.

Dubois describes himself as a hands-on leader who prioritizes building relationships within and across departments.

According to Michael Want, another deputy chief, Braintree’s officers grew to respect Dubois for combining big-picture planning – holding regular meetings with the entire staff to discuss the department’s direction – with smaller touches that made people feel valued, like reserving parking spaces for long-tenured dispatchers and expanding access to the police station’s gym.

The result was a culture shift that has been critical to Braintree’s efforts to retain officers at a time when departments nationwide are struggling to fill their ranks. Want said he believes zero officers have asked for permission to transfer to another department since Dubois arrived – a statistic he said would resonate with Portland officers.

“He’s one of the finest law enforcement people I’ve ever been around,” Want said. “He’s the full package.”

Even as he works to earn his place as an outside hire, Dubois said his goal is to make sure his successor will come from within Portland’s ranks.

A series of promotions and outside hires will round out the department’s leadership team over the next few months, and then Dubois said he plans to focus on professional development. While lower-ranking officers will continue to have opportunities in specialized units like the bomb squad and the dive team, Dubois said he will give his top deputies important roles in shaping the direction of the department and communicating with the public.

The goal, he said, is both to create an immediate succession plan and to construct a roster of several police leaders who could confidently take the helm when Dubois eventually retires.

“We have to build our bench,” West said. “We want to make sure that the city is successful, obviously today, but well into the future, as well.”

EARNING PUBLIC TRUST

Dubois said that building a positive culture would be a major step in improving officer recruitment and retention. According to a spokesperson, the department currently has 30 vacancies out of 158 authorized positions.

But in order to tackle the multifaceted crises facing Portland, including homelessness and drug addiction, he said police will need to effectively partner with city leadership and other departments, as well as communicate clearly with the public.

Law enforcement officials often say state laws limit how much information they can share about ongoing police investigations. Dubois acknowledged those hurdles, but said he would strive to be as transparent as possible in order to win the city’s trust.

He pointed to public frustration around Portland’s handling of a white supremacist march in April that resulted in a skirmish with counter-protesters but zero arrests. Due to ongoing investigations into the rally and the department’s handling of the event, the City Council elected in June to meet with Gorham behind closed doors, and the city denied the Press Herald’s public records request for police reports and body cam footage from the April 1 demonstration. At a July meeting, West said the city had come up with recommendations from an after-action report that include implementing First Amendment training for certain positions and new responses to First Amendment activity, but she did not provide an update on the investigation or its findings.

Dubois said he did not know specifics about the police response to the rally and that the department likely couldn’t share much more information. But he said law enforcement agencies in general needed to do a better job communicating with the public – even when specific details are unavailable.

“There’s always going to be that tug of war with police work and the perception of it. I think that the transparency piece fixes a lot of that,” he said. “At least when people understand what we do, they might not agree with it, but they’ll understand the circumstances.”

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