Feature: Playing the Blues: Two Towns Say Goodbye to Their Chief
BAR HARBOR—I hope you’ll forgive me for this piece because it’s a bit more feature than news and there’s a bit of self-insertion here. That’s because right around the same time as my books hit the New York Times bestseller list, I had a life crisis. What if this was it, the peak? What if I never sold another book again? My resume would just have a giant block of nothing on it that said ‘trying to write another book.’ Panicked, I applied for a part-time dispatching job in Mount Desert for fire, police, and ambulance.
Chief James “Jim” Willis hired me. He laughed about it, leaning up against the counter in dispatch, arms crossed in front of him, his typical pose, and said, “Yes, you’re hired, even though you’re a reporter.”
“Was a reporter,” I told him. “Was.”
He was always a little bit hesitant about reporters, though most would never know it, and he had a story about sneaking in on one who was reading things that they didn’t ask to read.
Truth is, Chief Willis has a story about everything. Sometimes, when people were lucky, he’d share them, leaning against a counter or the threshold of a door, laughing with this hearty gusto, blue eyes twinkling with mischief. He’d talk about blues musician Cory Harris during a break, awed, tell a self-deprecating story about one time he and one of his dogs were at Sand Beach. He’d wax poetic about his wife and daughter and the skill of blues guitarists who could play riffs made up of all kinds of parts and techniques.
In blues and in life, there are a lot of techniques to get you through. There are string skips and slides; vibratos and blends; there are picks and fingerstyles. They all combine to make a system of sound and music that seems implausible, but somehow ends up making a beautiful sort of sense. A person’s life can be like that, too.
As a chief and as a boss, Willis loved systems, loved process and policies and figuring out ways to make those work systems proceed more efficiently and ethically, but he also loves stories and people: their quirks, their riffs, the way they do things.
Even though I was just a little part-timer, he was constantly asking, “How do we make this better?”
And he’d listen. Then he’d come back at you with these astute observations, things other people never got about you.
“People might think you’re flighty,” he’d tell me, “but you love order, process.”
“That’s because—”
“You like to know what’s expected of you and exceed those expectations.”
He’d do that sort of thing, leave you stuttering and amazed and feeling seen? He’d do it all the time when he actually had the time to do it.
This Friday, Willis might start having a little more time to do that. He’ll spend his last day as the police chief of both Bar Harbor and Mount Desert, an arrangement that began as temporary, back in 2013, after Chief Nathan Young was placed on leave. Young was eventually let go. The temporary arrangement became permanent and was recently renewed this January. That arrangement may or may not continue. In the meantime Captain David Kerns will act as chief. Kerns was originally hired by Young during his tenure as Bar Harbor’s chief. Kerns is also part of the shared department contract as is Karen Richter, an administrative assistant.
He is taking a position at Dirigo Safety where he will be assigned to the Maine Bureau of Highway Safety as a liaison.
According to Willis some of the highlights of his time on the island are about people. It’s “watching people we've hired and mentored grow and become professionals,” he said.
Bar Harbor Fire Chief Matt Bartlett said, “I think Jim brought his professionalism every day and that was an example for his staff to follow. Sometimes it’s hard to always do that, but Jim did it every single day and that speaks to the person he is and his values.”
SHARED DEPARTMENTS
Under Willis, the Bar Harbor and Mount Desert police departments joined in several ways though they maintained separate dispatches. Kerns is a captain at both and will be acting chief for both. Neither town has discussed a hiring process for Willis’ replacement.
Bar Harbor Town Council Vice Chair Gary Friedmann said, “The fact that Jim was there and his experience and attitude made it possible to make it happen.” He called the sharing agreement a model for town collaboration. He said it took someone of Willis’ stature and calm-headedness to make that happen.
Town Councilor Matt Hochman agreed, sharing that when the process began, he was 100% against it. Through his actions, Willis convinced Hochman he was wrong. “He’s always told it to us straight. He’s a no-nonsense sort of guy,” Hochman said.
The Bar Harbor Town Council and Mount Desert Board of Selectmen will decide how and if they should continue the last sharing agreement, which was signed in January 2022 and is meant to last multiple years. Part of that process would be how a new chief would be hired.
What he’s proudest of, Willis said, isn’t what you might expect from a law enforcement officer.
Instead, it’s “The people I've been able to work with and the relationships developed. I've worked with a lot of great people and together we've built a combined agency that enjoys great community support and trust.”
Willis said, “I was honored to be a part of the Maine Chiefs of Police Association, serving as their President, helping develop and implement our state's law enforcement accreditation program. Dotty Small and I worked hard to introduce forensic interviewing locally and that has now grown to actual advocacy centers.”
THE DISTANT PAST
Willis didn’t grow up dreaming of a life in law enforcement.
It was “purely unintentional,” he said.
“I had an uncle and a grandfather who were in law enforcement, I looked up to them and the respect people gave them. I went to college for business management, tried related employment, and didn't like it. Dick Bishop invited me to come work for him in the jail in 1986, that led to being a dispatcher and then being hired as a full-time deputy within a year,” he said.
Before working on the island, Willis was the victim witness advocate at the Hancock County District Attorney’s office. That was twenty years ago. Before that, he was a patrol lieutenant at the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office for over 16 years, which is where he’d take brand new reporters under his wing when they timidly went in to the sheriff’s office to get the police beat and ask questions.
“Come in! Come in!” he’d say. “Don’t let them scare you.”
I always felt safe when Willis was there.
Right before Willis first became the chief in Mount Desert, an officer there had filed a lawsuit against the town about pay and his position. Another officer had been arrested for drunk driving. In 2014, he served as the Maine Chiefs of Police Association president. He was even acting town manager for three years in Mount Desert.
He received the Presidential Valor Award and a certificate of meritorious service in 1999 because of a shooting incident when he was at the sheriff’s department and was recognized several times for dedication and public service.
Councilor Kyle Shank spoke of how in 2020, his family lived at the edge of Ledgelawn Avenue during the Black Lives Matters’ protest. The police gave the protestors an escort. “The way that entire engagement went was really well principled and thought out,” Shank said. “It was really commendable and we’re really going to miss him.”
RICHARD BURDICK
Years ago, the police on the island did a combined active shooter training. I went to take photos for a blog post, hiding behind my camera and a little bit behind Willis. Willis stood there as his officers set things up. He watched everyone get ready, shook his head.
“I hate these things,” he said.
Surprised, I blurted, “You do?”
“Absolutely hate them.” He tapped his chest and pivoted so that we fully faced each other. “You be safe, stay behind stuff. I’m going to go.”
This Friday, Willis is going to go again, this time onto a job that probably won’t keep him in newspapers or the media. But it’s still a job that’s not linked to things he loves like blues guitar, dogs, his wife and daughter. It’s a job that still connects to keeping people safe.
Back in 1999, Willis, Mount Desert Police Department’s Ken Mitchell (who Willis later hired) and Jeff McFarland all worked for the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department.
Richard Burdick’s face hit the television screens on “America’s Most Wanted” one Saturday night in June. He was there for about 10 seconds. A federal fugitive, he was wanted for 10 counts of child rape, two counts of indecent assault, and battery on a child. In February 1998, he didn’t show up to his Northampton, Massachusetts trial and left a suicide note. He’d assaulted a girl for years. She showed up at the trial and testified. Two days later, they convicted him.
His appearance on the show generated eight leads and the sheriff’s department went to investigate.
Burdick didn’t commit suicide. Instead, he ran to Orland and hunkered down there with his wife, where two residents saw him and recognized him from the show. The Burdicks didn’t even use aliases. The informants called the police and Burdick holed up at the H.O.M.E. Cooperative on Route 1. Willis, McFarland, and Mitchell arrived. Burdick and his wife were living in a room over the craft museum part of the complex for months.
It was a bit after midnight, June 13, when the deputies arrived and called down Burdick who came to the door, his wife in front of him. In the pocket of his pants he’d concealed a .22 magnum handgun. They exchanged only a few words and the officers told Burdick to exit the house before Burdick fled up the stairs and into the darkness. McFarland chased him, grabbed his arm to try to decrease his speed. Burdick pivoted and shot McFarland point-blank in the chest.
McFarland was wearing a bulletproof vest and dropped. The deputies shot back eleven times. Willis shot Burdick in his groin. The officers retreated. Willis broke a finger or two as he ordered the men out and they raced back down the stairs. Burdick refused to come out. Eventually, the Maine State Police tactical team launched grenades and tear gas through the second-story window to the upstairs. Shortly after 6 a.m. they stormed the apartment. Burdick was half conscious.
The deputies were cleared. Burdick was charged with attempted murder.
SCALLOP GUTS AND PIXIES
It wasn’t the only time Willis made national news.
Back in November of 2012, at the Somesville One Stop, Andy Mays, a fisherman who was helping out a researcher from the University of Maine put two buckets of scallop innards in the back of a car. It was six months of research. Scallops were gutted. The organs were isolated. The organs were stored in formaldehyde. The organs were gonads.
But it turns out that the car parked at the One Stop? It wasn’t the right car even though it had a UMaine plate.
An associate professor at UMaine found the buckets in the back of the car when she got to Orono to put in gas.
After making headlines locally, the story was picked up by the AP, and the incident became a spoof on “The Colbert Report” back when it was still on Comedy Central. Willis appeared in the spot.
The chief laughed about it. “Did you see that?” he’d ask, shaking his head.
When I wrote some of my novels about pixies and fae, about people battling to stave off the end of the world, he’d say, “Did you put me in there?”
“Of course,” I’d tell him. I wasn’t lying. He made his way into the latter books in my young adult series.
He’d pause. “Did you make me look good?”
“Didn’t even have to try.”
He’d laugh. “I knew I liked you, Jones.”
He’d leave dispatch, and someone would mutter “suck up” or something similar, which is only halfway true. The thing is that with Willis, you didn’t have to try. Somehow despite seeing the horrible things that people could do, things that shouldn’t happen, things that other people shouldn’t have to live through, things that other people shouldn’t have to see, he still believed in people, could be awed by the goodness in them, the passion of a political advocate, the calmness of a town administrator, the joy of a little kid eating ice cream on a Mount Desert road, the skill of a Jeff Beck blues riff built off the D Mixolydian scale.
Town Councilor Earl Brechlin said that he worked closely with Willis during his time at the Mount Desert Islander and that Willis understood the community so well. That’s because he saw it, all of it, the way the people combined to make melodies that were sometimes discordant and sometimes beautiful.
“It’s a really hard job being with people at some of the hardest times in their lives,” Brechlin said. “He’s a real human in that space.”
RESOLUTION
The Bar Harbor Town Council unanimously voted in a resolution honoring Willis. Council Chair Valerie Peacock thanked former Councilor Jill Goldthwait for drafting the resolution after interviewing people in town.
WHEREAS Chief Willis has served as police chief of the towns of both Bar Harbor and Mt. Desert for almost a decade; and
WHEREAS this unique municipal compact was made possible by the chief’s thoughtful work with town officials and his sensitivity to the concerns of members of both departments and the public; and
WHEREAS Chief Willis, due to his calm demeanor and distaste for drama has been called “perfect” for the job of creating a stable environment in a public-facing department with high-risk duties; and
WHEREAS Chief Willis helped each officer to reach full potential in their assigned roles, resulting in members of his staff stepping up at critical junctures and performing with distinction; and
WHEREAS his organizational skills and mission-driven approach led to innovations in harbor management and the parking program; and
WHEREAS in the words of one police officer “he will be missed not only by both towns and their police departments, but by the entire law enforcement profession in Maine and by the many individuals for whom he was a mentor;” and
WHEREAS the chief’s response to any challenge was always “we’ve got this;”
NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the members of the Bar Harbor Town Council hereby express their appreciation to Police Chief Jim Willis for his transformative service to our community and wish him well in future endeavors.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
https://www.newspapers.com/image/963561865/
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/me-supreme-judicial-court/1418316.html
https://barharborstory.substack.com/p/police-chief-jim-willis-last-day
If it were not for Chief Willis, Leonard Leo would have succeeded in having me arrested for my First Amendment Protected and Maine Criminal Code compliant 'google Leonard Leo = Corrupt Courts' chalk messaging project. (Initiated in response to the Leo involved arrest of Eli Durand McDonnell for exercising his constitutional rights.)
Chief Willis and Capt. Kerns resisted pressure from Leo and from former Bar Harbor Town Manager Kevin Sutherland (with the official support of the Bar Harbor Town Council) to have me arrested on a cherry picked misrepresentation of Criminal Mischief law. And I do not know how many other influential people may also have allied themselves with Leo.
Chief Willis and Capt. Kerns were also under pressure from a few police officers to charge me with a crime. It could not have been easy for them. And they had so much else to do. But they were diligent and considered in protecting my rights. And they were kind to me. The only town officials who cared at all about the law, the facts, and their official responsibilities . . . and respected me as a member of the community. They exemplify and personify community policing and law enforcement at its best. I have to believe that had Chief Willis or Capt. Kerns been consulted Eli would not have been arrested.
It is a great loss to us for Chief Willis to be retiring. But it is another mark of truly good leadership to prepare for the transfer of authority. And we are very fortunate to have Capt. Kerns.
ThankYou Chief Willis and all best wishes for everything you do next. From strength to strength.