During his second month on the job in June, Lewiston City Administrator Bryan Kaenrath went on a ride-along with a police officer.

The first call they responded to was a fatal overdose. The pair walked into an apartment and found an unresponsive male sprawled on the floor, foaming at the mouth.

“Paramedics arrived, began chest compressions, shocked him with a defibrillator but could not bring him back. He died right there,” Kaenrath said in a letter to the City Council on June 30.

When Kaenrath asked the officer how often they have calls like this, the officer said, “All the time.”

The letter, which came before police responded to three shooting incidents in a four-day span in July, strongly urges councilors to reexamine officer pay as the department’s workload remains high and recently adjusted salaries are already falling behind other communities.

Like other cities, the police department is struggling to fill vacancies. Right now, Lewiston is down nine officers — a dozen if you include those out on medical leave.

“They are busier than ever and doing this while operating understaffed,” Kaenrath said in the letter. “That is the current reality. They are working hard every day and dealing with things that quite frankly many people don’t have the stomach or gumption to handle.”

At the beginning of this year, officials approved a pay increase and a reduction in the number of years it takes for officers to reach the highest wages in an effort to help staff retention.

At the time, the force had eight vacancies. The starting wage was upped to $30.78 an hour, and now sits at $31.55 following a cost-of-living increase that went into effect July 1. However, for a large city with complex problems, the entry-level rate is still less than cities like Saco ($35.50), Biddeford ($35.36), Scarborough ($34.23), Falmouth ($33.06), Westbrook ($32.68), and Bangor ($32.29).

The starting pay in Rumford, a small town in Oxford County, is $34.

Kaenrath told councilors that while Lewiston has increased officer pay “substantially” in recent years, “we already find ourselves behind even small area communities such as Norway and Rumford in officer pay.”

He said in order to increase foot patrols, community policing and special details targeting the city’s challenges with gun violence, Lewiston needs to fill its vacant positions. But, he said, the department’s workload and Lewiston’s “reputational challenges” make it more difficult.

“For many prospective officers and their families, why would they come to Lewiston when they can make more money elsewhere and not deal with even a fraction of the often gruesome cases we have here?” he said.

The police union contracts should be “at or above the market in terms of wages and competitiveness,” he said, adding, “We need to fill these seats and we need to do it soon. I don’t think we have a choice.”

The council has not yet had formal discussions on the issue, so the level of support for another pay increase is unclear. Lewiston’s pay is on par with cities like Portland ($31.67), Brunswick ($30.69), Gorham ($31.50), and its neighbor Auburn ($31.10).

The department also just moved into a new $17 million headquarters in the Bates Mill complex.

Ward 1 Councilor Josh Nagine said that if the council is to consider a pay increase outside of budget season, they’ll have to identify where the funding will come from and its potential impact to future budgets as the city also conducts a property revaluation.

“The Police Department is already the largest city side budget expense, but being able to address public safety concerns and quality of life issues effectively in our community contributes to an environment that supports new investment, which in turn spreads the tax burden,” he said.

But, Nagine said, Lewiston police are “working considerable overtime while operating with limited capacity.”

“If the administrator’s proposal is supported by LPD and it results in needed positions being filled, it would strike me as ill advised for the council to refuse to consider providing the tools requested,” he said.

According to Kaenrath, the Police Department has been responding to over 1,000 calls for service some weeks. Between April 1 and June 25 there were roughly 1,400 motor vehicle stops and 1,480 “proactive officer-initiated activities,” including foot patrols, community contacts, ordinance violations, field interviews and more.

Kaenrath believes the newly opened police headquarters is helpful for recruitment, but said “the obvious big factor is wages and benefits.” The new police station at 141 Mill St., completed in May, had about $2 million in cost overruns.

Unlike cities like Portland, Lewiston does not have a dedicated officer recruitment website or webpage. The department’s current website features application info with an outdated starting salary.

Lewiston police Lt. Derrick St. Laurent said the department recently hired two candidates who will soon leave for the Maine Criminal Justice Academy, but that means 18 weeks of training and then three months of field training in Lewiston before they can work on their own.

St. Laurent said the challenges the department faces are also being seen statewide, with police work requiring “a level of commitment and resilience that not everyone is willing, or able, to take on,” plus additional challenges posed by modern policing.

“Perhaps most challenging of all is the human side of the job,” he said. “Officers frequently interact with community members during their most difficult moments. Bearing witness to crisis, trauma, and conflict on a daily basis takes a toll mentally, emotionally, and physically.”

When asked about call volume, St. Laurent said officers who have transferred to Lewiston from smaller agencies are often surprised by “the sheer number of calls we handle.”

“It’s not uncommon for a single officer to respond to 20 or more calls for service during one shift,” he said. “The demand on our personnel is constant and intense.”

Mayor Carl Sheline said LPD officers are “hard-working and committed” but that “no one can keep up with the required overtime forever.”

“We will need to do something soon or we’re going to lose more officers,” he said. “Any organization that wants to excel needs to attract and retain employees and a big component of being able to do that is competitive pay.”