A stash of syringes and spoons that police speculate may have been hidden for drug use was found along Park Road just outside the Mercy Hospital Recovery Center earlier this week.

Westbrook Police Chief Paul McCarthy said 15 syringes and a couple of spoons were found by a public services employee while doing roadside cleanup close to 40 Park Road. McCarthy said the items were found at about 1 p.m. on Monday.

McCarthy said he was uncertain what the syringes could have been used for, but he speculated that it might have been for cooking a narcotic-based drug such as heroin.

“Right now there’s no way to tie the discovery to the hospital,” he said. “We can conjecture that maybe it’s related (to the recovery center), but we have no proof.”

McCarthy said the public services employee called police, who asked the fire department to collect and dispose of the syringes and spoons in a safe manner. He said fire department officials transported the items to Maine Medical Center in Portland for disposal, which is the proper protocol. The items were not tested, he said, which would have been a special procedure.

McCarthy said the find was significant in that it’s more typical to find a smaller number of syringes, although the police have found as many as 40 syringes in one location before. He said it’s not typical to find spoons along with the syringes.

Beyond that, though, he said the find represented just another indication of drug use in Westbrook. McCarthy said he couldn’t recall the last time syringes were found after a Brown Street girl was pricked by a syringe she found in the woods near her home earlier in the spring.