Time to move on: On his way back to Belknap County, McIntire reflects on role as Bristol police chief

BRISTOL — Come March, Bristol Police Chief James McIntire will be returning to the Belknap County Sheriff’s Department, where he previously worked for five-and-a-half years. He will be leaving behind a fully-staffed department that is looking forward to a move into a new public safety building — very different from the situation when McIntire arrived in March 2018.

At that time, the town was involved in litigation with its former police chief, Michael Lewis, who resigned the previous October after being placed on administrative leave a month earlier. Morale within the police department was low.

“I took the position and essentially had to kind of redirect or correct some morale issues,” McIntire said during an interview Monday. “There was a constant revolving door of people coming and then leaving, going to other departments. It was a pretty sad state of affairs.”

McIntire said he takes a positive view of how to approach life and it carries into his work.

“I think once I came in and people got used to what my vision and what my hopes would be for my mission, they really jumped on board and everyone rowed in the same direction,” he said. He quickly had the support of the existing police force and was able to bring in additional officers who also were excited about starting something new.

Coming to Bristol from a position in the Northfield Police Department, and being a resident of Gilford, McIntire admits, “I didn’t really know a lot about Bristol prior to coming here. ... I’m more of a Gilford, Laconia, Alton, Lakes Region-centralized person and this is on the outer fringe of where I ventured. But it’s an amazing community. The people are incredibly nice. ... It’s just one of the nicest places I’ve ever worked, to be honest with you.”

However, when Belknap County Sheriff William Wright called to ask him to consider a position as chief deputy, responsible for the overall operations under the sheriff, he felt he could not turn it down.

“I’ve got the ability to be laterally transferred to a similar-type position and have an impact, and that’s really the only answer I can give,” McIntire said.

He expects to be facing a similar challenge with employee turnover, but hopes to “maybe bring back some of the pride and the excitement about working at the Belknap County Sheriff’s Department.”

Job progression

Wright said he considered at least four other candidates to fill the chief deputy’s position, “but Jim McIntire is by far the candidate that I progressively sought after and I’m glad to say that he’ll be employed here in a short time.”

McIntire has lived in Gilford for 20 years, and made the rounds through several area law enforcement communities, including Northfield, Bow, and Laconia, as well as the Belknap County Sheriff’s Department. Wright said he has known McIntire since the early 1990s when McIntire was a Northfield police officer and Wright lived there.

“When I returned from the Marine Corps and became a police officer, I actually worked in the town of Belmont, and Jim worked and taught at Belmont as well, so we were patrol officers together. And then, throughout the years, when I eventually came here to the sheriff’s office, he eventually got hired here as well, back in the mid-2000s,” Wright said.

McIntire had an opportunity to become a sergeant in Northfield, “and I wholeheartedly supported his professional growth, as much as I knew I was going to miss him working here,” Wright said.

McIntire was still working in Northfield when he saw the advertisement for chief of police in Bristol.

“It wasn’t that I really had aspirations to be a police chief, but the job certainly appealed to me, and I put my hat in the ring,” McIntire recalled.

Wright sent a letter of support to Bristol officials.

“I knew his natural abilities to connect with people,” Wright said.

Besides the inner turmoil in Bristol’s police station, McIntire learned that “there was a lack of approachability of the police department. I think that the average citizens didn’t feel like they could just go up and talk to the police chief or inquire what was going on. And maybe they didn’t feel it was a very transparent environment. So those were some of the challenges that were immediate, and things I tried to approach and address right away.”

Bristol experience

Policing in a community like Bristol, McIntire said, “is not overly difficult. You have your ebbs and flows of crimes; you have times when the economy’s not so good and there are a lot more thefts and crimes against property. You have more domestic violence issues when times are tougher for people at home. But for the most part, we’ve seen a drop in activity and caseload.”

Part of the reason, he said, is the decriminalization of marijuana. In the past, detecting the smell of marijuana would lead to an arrest or detention and perhaps the discovery of other drugs. “It would also lead to warrant arrests. With that would come failure to appear arrests. So, decriminalizing marijuana possession also changed the sequence of other events."

As marijuana cases declined, police have seen more heroin, fentanyl, and other dangerous drugs appear. But as for drugs in schools, McIntire said police have responded to cases of vape products being discovered, but “that is a tobacco issue, not a drug issue.”

“Never have I seen a heroin overdose in our schools, or a fentanyl overdose, but I have had kids come in with marijuana edibles or THC edibles and brownies, and had children that were sick. They had to be medically seen because of that, and that’s happened at the middle school and in the high school. We’ve seen that at least once in each school.”

He added, “Thankfully, we have a pretty good working relationship with the schools.”

In the current economy, police have been responding to more thefts of construction trailers and equipment, as well as kayaks and snowmobiles left unattended at lakefront properties. McIntire credits home surveillance systems with helping them catch the thieves.

“We get a lot of calls from second-home owners from Massachusetts that will call and say, 'Somebody suspicious is in our driveway.' It’s great that somebody has an alert on their smartphone, and then they can call us and let us know.”

In the past, police had to respond to alarms that turned out to be a squirrel in the attic or other false triggers, taking time and resources away from real crimes.

“But actually getting a call from a homeowner that has an alert and sees somebody on their camera, we love those calls,” McIntire said.

The other common calls police are receiving involve vehicle crashes with serious injuries, which McIntire attributes to driver inattention and speeding.

“We see a lot of centerline encroachment,” he said. “We’ve had two or three head-on accidents on Route 104-Summer Street, from the square all the way to the town line in New Hampton, because of distracted drivers. People drift over the road, whether it’s answering a phone or dropping something.”

The department today

Bristol’s police force today is fully staffed with seasoned officers who have a wealth of experience, McIntire said.

“We have a good reputation here. The environment’s good, just the quality of life. That’s why people kind of gravitate to this job. They enjoy being problem-solvers.”

McIntire also is full of praise for the department’s canine officer, Arro, and his human partner, Officer Nicholas Kelley.

“I might sound like a brag, but the town of Bristol is probably the luckiest town to ever have a K9 program because Arro is just an amazing dog, not like any other. I’ve been around a lot of canines over my career, and Arro is one of the family. He can work freely amongst everyone in this building and I don’t have the slightest fear that the dog is going to bite someone. And as a handler, Nick Kelley has done an amazing job with him.”

Arro’s personality is unique, according to the chief. “He knows when he’s working and he knows when he’s not, and he turns it on and off perfectly.”

The department now faces challenge in the demolition of the current police station to make way for a new public safety building for the fire and police departments. The station is tentatively set to be razed in March, and officers will have to work elsewhere until the new building is completed.

McIntire has arranged for the patrol officers to use the fire department’s training room as a substation for filing reports and preparing for their shifts. The administrative staff, support services, and detectives will work out of reconfigured space in the town office building. The town has an agreement with New Hampton for booking space, and any prisoners requiring lockup will be transferred to the Grafton County Department of Corrections in Haverill. With Bristol at the opposite end of the county from that facility, McIntire is hoping for an arrangement with the Belknap and Merrimack correctional facilities to handle violent or intoxicated persons.

The chief said that, although he will be leaving, he has offered to continue serving on the public safety building committee to relieve pressure on his successor.

As to who will replace him, McIntire said it will be up to the selectboard to decide, but he has recommended promotion from within.

“I’ve developed a succession plan that has kind of always been in the works since I started,” McIntire said. His pick, Lt. Kristopher Bean, has “understood the mission and my vision and he’s been right along beside me trying to achieve that. He’s also gotten to experience the successes of that and it will be the least amount of disruption to the organization with our new building happening.”

The task ahead

Like Bristol at the time of McIntire’s arrival, the Belknap County Sheriff’s Department has been experiencing a high staff turnover, especially among dispatchers. A recent pay raise approved by the Belknap County Commissioners has helped to stabilize the problem, and Wright says they now have some “really good people” who are career-oriented rather than simply job-oriented.

There was a similar problem with per diem court personnel.

“Some of it’s been a natural changeover, and again, pay has been a huge thing where I was able to attract really good personnel, people who want longevity and people who want to do a really good job down there,” Wright said.

“I want career professionals to work here and I want people who look beyond just working,” Wright continued, saying the deputy ranks have been stable through the years and the recent resignation was the first he has experienced.

“I’ve managed to hire people, and the retention portion is what I think that Jim McIntire is going to help me to do, is get us to be able to retain people and keep that positive professional growth going. A good number one needs a good number two, and that’s exactly what I find in him.”