Maine’s Public Safety Crisis: Bobby Charles

Strangely, Maine’s Democrats are taking a victory lap on data showing 490 Mainers died of overdoses in 2024, down 18 percent from 2023, a reduction largely credited to the availability of the overdose reversal drug, Naloxone.

Calling this progress is a misfire. Maine is actually in crisis.

Augusta’s establishment seems to misunderstand what is happening. They’re not making progress, rather they are failing. We saw 10,000 overdoses last year, any of which could be fatal. While Naloxone reverses an overdose, it is not treatment. Maine has a “chronic shortage” of effective treatment, not just substituting one drug for another drug and not just giving away needles, but confronting and stopping addiction.

While technically boasting 148 treatment centers, Maine has only 350 treatment beds statewide for 1.4 million citizens. We have the highest percentage of citizens seeking treatment in the nation. From Portland to Bangor, Mainers want real treatment, and lines are running out the door and around the block.

So when it comes to the actual problem, where is the Democrat governor, attorney general, legislators? Where is focus? Nowhere to be seen.

Next, look at what Democrats did to law enforcement. Maine is failing the men and women whose job it is to keep us safe. Between anti-police rhetoric, local and state cutbacks, sheriffs, chiefs, state patrols, and drug enforcement are stretched to the limit. Recruiting, retention, and morale are down, not enough new recruits in the pipeline, and drug traffickers are proliferating.

Compounding these failures, Maine has no Northern High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) presence, just one designated HIDTA county (Cumberland) – as organized crime, foreign-source Drug Trafficking Organizations (DTOs) aggressively fight one another in order to dominate Maine.

Dominican crime groups, like the Trinitarios, come from their hubs in Boston and New York to all 16 Maine counties, all the way up to the border, institutionalizing themselves. They’re no longer just in and out—now they’re here to stay. They feud with each other and Central American, Mexican, Chinese, and other gangs, now including MS-13, the Bloods, Crips, Gangster Disciples, and Latin Kings. These are all violent groups.

This is why we see a vertical spike in fatal and non-fatal overdoses, addiction, treatment needs, and cascading violent and property crime. More than 80 percent of state crime, domestic to street, is now drug-related. So, to combat that crime, we must also end supply and addiction.

The cascading effect of organized crime in Maine, something we never had in my youth, under this Democrat governor, attorney general, and legislature may seem a “new normal”—but it is not acceptable. We’re seeing violent assaults and even drive-by shootings. Maine’s public safety is collapsing.

We are now also seeing the violent Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, moving into New England. While Maine is remote and largely rural, this is also a vulnerability. Getting police to fight crime fast is a challenge, and will be even when we rebuild the law enforcement community. Safety matters.

The truth is Maine’s Democrat leadership is failing to keep Maine safe. Prioritizing benefits for illegal aliens, false asylum seekers, over-subsidizing gambits like electric cars and buses, solar panels to every horizon, floating wind farms, and suing oil companies in California, Democrats miss the forest for the trees. Maine needs help here, right now, law and order, keeping kids safe.

Two last thoughts for today. Beyond stopping drug supply from Boston and New York, up-funding law enforcement, and a “get well, stay well” plan for the state to end addiction, we need to shut the northern border—and then reteach kids drug prevention, how to stay healthy.

Our northern border—Maine has 600 miles of it—will be traffickers’ new target once the southern border is shut. Already last year, we saw 43 pounds of fentanyl coming from the north, that we know about. Since a fatal dose is two milligrams, 43 pounds could kill everyone in Maine—eight times over. That is deadly serious.

As for prevention, it actually works. Look at the data. When prevention was taken seriously in the 1980s, effective treatment, law enforcement, borders tight, source country programs, we dramatically reduced illicit drug use, addiction, overdoses, and crime. It can be done.

Counternarcotics, law enforcement, using cued intelligence, coordinating local, state, and federal resources to solve big problems, protecting borders and people, putting traffickers out of business—this has been the better part of my life. It can be done, must be done to save the Maine we love. Until we do this, until we get leaders who care about our future, no more victory laps.