When Officer Danielle Cyr graduated this spring from the Maine Criminal Justice Academy, she became the 26th police officer currently serving in Windham.

But according to Police Chief Rick Lewsen, his department should have an enrollment of 27 officers, and he is having a tough time reaching this goal.The difficulty, he said, stems from how long it takes to hire and train a new officer. By the time a new officer is in uniform, there’s a good chance another vacancy has opened.

Lewsen said it takes about three months to select a proper candidate. Then the candidate must undergo 18 weeks of training at the Maine Criminal Justice Academy. After that, the candidate requires 12 weeks on the force before he’ll let a new officer drive alone.

“You’re talking about nine months before you have a finished product on the road,” said Lewsen.

Town Manager Tony Plante said the town would probably need to raise the so-called capacity amount to 29 or 30 to be able to keep 27 uniformed officers in employment.

The capacity number is determined by the town government as a reflection of its population. Plante said the population of Windham is estimated at 16,372, and that nearby Westbrook, with an estimated population of 16,109, has a police capacity of 31.

He also said Saco, population 18,231, has capacity of 34 officers and Scarborough, population 18,898, has a capacity of 33 officers.

In August 2005, Lewsen said, he hired three applicants who already had their public safety degrees. The three men, Jason Croft, Joseph Bureau and Wayne Cote, attended the Maine Criminal Justice Academy at the expense of the town. Lewsen said Croft quit on his first day on the force and took a job with Auburn police.

“That didn’t feel very good, it was pretty discouraging,” said Lewsen. He said the city of Auburn repaid Windham for the officer’s training.

The other two new recruits quit soon thereafter. Cote decided he wasn’t cut out for law enforcement. Bureau went to the Maine State Police.

“It’s been a career goal of mine for as long as I can remember. My grandfather was a trooper, my father was a trooper, and now I’m a trooper,” said Bureau.

“I definitely don’t have anything negative to say about Windham, they’re a great bunch of guys to work with,” he said.

Bureau said he still operates in the area as a state trooper and has a good working relationship with the town.

Bureau said it’s common for those who aspire to join the state police to work for a municipal police force to hone their law enforcement skills.

“It’s not just Windham, it’s everywhere in the state,” he said.

“Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t want to do this job,” said Brandon Ladd, 21, who has served on the Windham police force since December.

He said he loves everything about being a Windham cop, but said the long hours, brushes with danger and high levels of stress scare a lot of people off.

Lt. David DeGruchy has been in the Windham Police Department since 1978. He said being a cop today is a lot harder than it used to be.

“I think society has become a little more complicated,” he said, saying modern cops have to confront social issues as well as criminal ones.

“They’re taking more time to train police officers so they’re better prepared,” said DeGruchy. The Maine Criminal Justice Academy training he took in the 1970s was six weeks shorter than it is today.

Staying fully staffed doesn’t appear to be a problem for just Windham.

“It’s happening all over the state. The pool of candidates is nowhere near where it used to be,” said Bob Schwartz, executive director of the Maine Chiefs of Police Association. He was the chief of the South Portland Police Department and retired 13 years ago.

He said the physical standards for new police are much higher than in the past. A 20-year-old male is required to do 29 pushups in a minute and a half, 38 sit-ups in the same amount of time, and run a mile and a half in 12 1/2 minutes or less.

The standards vary with ages and gender. Schwartz said the small pool of people who do want to be cops is cut down even more by these standards.

Kevin Joyce, chief deputy of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department, said in the late 1980s an open police position would have about 30 applicants, or as high as 300 if it was a big department.

Today, that number is between 10 and 15, he said.

Joyce said other states have responded by lowering the physical standards.

“Personally, I don’t think lowering them is the answer,” said Joyce. He said the high standards the Maine Criminal Justice Academy sets help weed out people lower standards would let slip by.

Besides the two-year public safety degree and physical tests, potential cops are given a polygraph test focusing on their personal history with crime, alcohol and drugs.

“Today, you don’t get many candidates that haven’t experimented with some drug,” said Schwartz. Drug experimentation does not necessarily disqualify a candidate, he said.

He also said modern police have a much tougher job than in the past.

“You’re not only enforcing the law, you’re also social workers,” he said. He said that cops are a lot busier with the higher volume of calls, increase in population and have to spend time dealing with drug activity and the mentally ill.

Schwartz said he’s seen people leave the profession after seven years, but those who make it after that tend to stay.

“Once the person has gotten 10, 12, 14 years in, they’ve committed themselves to the pension system,” he said.

Schwartz said the private sector often has better benefits and pay with less stress on the family. That, Schwartz said, lures some people away.

And, some departments pay a few thousand dollars more at the start.

“That’s enticing to some people,” he said.

The starting pay for a Windham police officer is $32,017.44 a year, and benefits including two weeks’vacation, full health coverage and money toward further education.

Bill Rhoads is the chief of the Milton Police Department in Washington State. Until a few months ago he was a captain in the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Department.

“I talked it over with my wife and we decided we needed to look toward the future,” he said in a phone interview.

He said while the pay is better, he was really drawn by a desire to be closer to his son and daughter-in-law, who, he said, will be having children soon.

Windham’s Lewsen said he thinks the economy is another factor and says he is competing with the private sector. He said he should see more applicants when the private market dries up.

Lewsen became a law enforcement officer in the fall on 1972. He worked for the sheriff’s department, then the state police. He went back to the sheriff’s department and worked in Windham before the town had its own police force. He joined the Windham Police Department in 1976 when it formed.

He said being understaffed costs the department money because empty shifts need to be made up with overtime. And it’s taxing on his officers.

“You don’t want people to get tired, it can compromise their safety,” he said.

He said if his department was at full capacity, he’d be able to set aside several officers to work on specific issues, such as watching drug activity and checking on people out on bail.

He said people who are on bail for domestic violence usually end up back at home, and he’d like to make sure the person’s domestic partner is safe.

Danielle Cyr, Windham’s newest police officer.WindhamPoliceCapacity1-2: Windham Community Services Officer Matt Cyr with one of the patrol cars that his department uses to keep Windham safe. Officials say the department have a few obstacles that make staying fully staffed difficult.WindhamPoliceCapacity1-2: Windham Community Services Officer Matt Cyr with one of the patrol cars that his department uses to keep Windham safe. Officials say the department have a few obstacles that make staying fully staffed difficult.WindhamPoliceCapacity3: Windham Community Services Officer Matt Cyr with some of the police vehicles his department uses to keep Windham safe. Officials say the department have a few obstacles that make staying fully staffed difficult.WindhamPoliceCapacity4: Badge