Brunswick Police Chief Scott Stewart warns of an

WCME News Exclusive
It was a message softly delivered but at the same time scary and spellbinding — a worrisome warning about an expanding menace, looming ever larger in the distance.
For a full half-hour at Brunswick town hall, with town councilors in front of him, in an atmosphere something like breathless, Police Chief Scott Stewart detailed an evolving mental health crisis, fueled in part by homelessness, which he says is “snowballing out of control”, and notably worsened when the warming center on Tenney Way opened in 2024.
At that point, the chief says Brunswick began to see a vast increase in its homeless population, much of it from out-of-town and out-of-state, with unhoused people streaming in to make Brunswick their home through the winter months.
And too often there has been trouble, in the form of violence, drug use, and more.
While the problems are centered in the downtown area, they have also spread to points throughout the town, such as the cemetery on River Road, where mattresses, needles, feces and stolen property have been spotted.
Worse yet, the chief says officers have often spent so much time on calls for service in the downtown area, that the police force has been unavailable for potential calls in other parts of town.
Chief Stewart has formed a year-round in-house task force to attempt to deal with the situation–a group that he says meets religiously–every two weeks.
He also gives major credit to Hadley Austin, the police department’s mental health liaison, who spends much of his time following up on individual needy situations.
The chief says he’s not sure about where solutions lie, but he says action must be taken, to stop these problems from exploding.

Chief Stewart’s full remarks to the town council are here.