Former Calais cop indicted on 35 charges related to stealing drugs, firearms
May 22, 2021
(BDN) -- A former Calais police officer accused of furnishing drugs to a teenager in a high school parking lot has been indicted on 35 charges, according to the state attorney general's office.
Jeffrey Bishop, 53, of Cherryfield was arrested in February on drug furnishing and trafficking charges, a few weeks after he resigned as a police officer with the Calais Police Department. He is accused of giving hydrocodone and fentanyl to a 17-year-old girl in the Narraguagus High School parking lot on Feb. 1, according to a police affidavit filed in Washington County Superior Court.
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The charges Bishop was indicted for on Wednesday by a Washington County grand jury include five counts of stealing drugs from the Calais Police Department and 24 others related to 16 stolen firearms that police found in his home in February. He also was indicted on four charges of aggravated furnishing of drugs and one charge of unlawful trafficking in drugs.
Bishop is charged with stealing 9 of the 16 guns found in his home. One allegedly was stolen in Cherryfield or Milbridge in January 2017, at which time he worked as a police officer for the town of Milbridge and as a corrections officer for Downeast Correctional Facility in Machiasport. The 8 other guns allegedly were stolen from a Milbridge couple in April 2018, when he worked as a police officer for that town but had left his job at the Machiasport prison, according to employment records kept on file at the Maine Criminal Justice Academy.
Bishop, a former candidate for Washington County sheriff, worked for 10 different law enforcement agencies or corrections facilities in Hancock and Washington counties from 1995 through early this year. He worked as a Calais police officer for less than two years, from August 2019 until he resigned on January 31, five days before he was arrested.
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Bishop, who had been freed on bail, turned himself in on Friday morning after a warrant for his arrest was issued based on the indictment, according to the attorney general's office.
Also indicted Wednesday was Jamie Denbow, a former police officer in Baileyville. Denbow is charged with one count of receiving stolen property for allegedly buying a firearm from Bishop and then selling it to a game warden, according to the attorney general's office.
According to employment records for Denbow kept on file at the Maine Criminal Justice Academy, Denbow last worked for the Baileyville Police Department in January 2020. Between 1999 and 2020, he also at various times worked as a dispatcher for Hancock County; as a police officer for the Gouldsboro, Milbridge, Jonesport, and Machias police departments and the Washington County Sheriff's Department; and as a corrections officer at Penobscot County Jail and Downeast Correctional Facility in Machiasport.
