The Duck of Justice

https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2016/08/30/meet-officer-behind-the-bangor-maine-police-departments-viral-facebook-page

Meet the officer behind the Bangor Maine Police Department’s viral Facebook page
Sergeant Tim Cotton's humorous posts have cultivated a devoted following.
Tim Cotton and the Duck of Justice are celebrities of the Bangor Maine Police Department. Tim Cotton and the Duck of Justice are celebrities of the Bangor Maine Police Department. –Bangor Maine Police Department
By
Allison Pohle
August 30, 2016

For someone who claims to know nothing about social media, Tim Cotton sure has a lot of Facebook fans. When he took over Bangor Maine Police Department Facebook page in 2014, it had less than 10,000 followers. Since then, the page has racked up nearly 173,000 “likes,” which is more than five times the population of Bangor.

Cotton’s posts, which range from retellings of some emergency calls the department receives to photos of the famed “Duck of Justice” mascot, are comedic musings often written in a stream-of-consciousness, tongue-in-cheek manner. The Sergeant—who says you can just call him Tim—began writing the type of page he would want to read about a police department, which is why he writes essays about his coworkers and makes up short stories about Mainers who break the law.

He’s also made up some laws of his own. In one viral post, he laid out the policies surrounding the “intra-home sharing of flannel shirts. Specifically, when a person takes a plaid, flannel shirt from another person in the same home” and whether it can be considered theft. (If you’re curious, let the Flannel Wearers and Owners Association of Maine explain).

“I’m not a social media guy,” Cotton said. “I’m 53 years old. But I like to tell our story.”

Boston.com spoke with Cotton about how he tells the department’s story, his sense of humor, and his trusty sidekick, the Duck of Justice.

What made you want to get into policing?

I’m not one of those people who wanted to do this my whole life. My father was a police officer when I was born and he came off the beat in 1963. I first worked in radio here in Bangor. I enjoyed my time as a radio personality, and I did news and some morning shows. I finally sought out police work later on in my life compared to most people. There was no epiphany or grand plan. I think I always had the inclination to go into it, but it just sort of worked out in the ‘80s. I was 25, and most guys want to come into police work in their early 20s. Before then I had worked in a machine shop, I worked in radio, I did some small newspaper stuff. I had some experience outside law enforcement, so I had more experience talking with people than those who become police officers right out of college. I think everything I did up to the point where I decided to join the force certainly was a positive in moving into this role.

You’re most known for your role in running the Facebook page. How did that become your project?

Most of my career I spent as a detective here. I did that for 12 years. I was doing crimes against persons and sex crimes. After a while, I realized it was a good time to make a change, so I put in for a promotion, and I was promoted to sergeant. I took over as public information officer, and part of the responsibility is the Facebook page. We had about 9,300 followers when I took it over in 2014.

When did you start to have fun with the page?

Right away. When I came into it, I looked at other police department Facebook pages. A lot of them had great information, but none of them spoke to me at all. I’ve always been a big reader of comedy, like Dave Barry and Art Buchwald, so being a guy that likes to be somewhat sarcastic and have a good time, I requested to the chief, “Can I change the tone?” I said I would like to do some writing and essays and tell the story of the Bangor Police Department in a different way. He said to be cautious and don’t go too far with some of the humor, and also don’t do politics and don’t do religion, but we didn’t want to talk about that anyways.

It’s no secret that some communities have had troubled relationships with their police departments. How do you use your page to speak to your community?

Of course there are bad cops that need to be out of the industry and who need to be out of a job. But most cops are good people. I hear cops do interviews all the time, and they say, ‘We want to show that we’re human.’ I don’t think we need to show we’re human. We need to show kindness, empathy and humor. We are human. That’s a given. I wanted to present us in a positive light and I think in these times, it doesn’t hurt to have some humor.

The main celebrity on the Facebook page is a guy known as the Duck of Justice. Tell me about him.

It used to be in the DA’s office, and I said, ‘If you ever get rid of that duck, I’d like to have it.’ The DA’s office was moving to a new location in 2011, and someone had thrown the duck in the trash can. I took the duck and, you know, it wasn’t stealing because it was in the trash and free for the taking. It was called the “Duck of Truth” at that time. If we had someone in for an interview, we would say, ‘You can’t lie in front of the duck.’ It was a great conversation starter.

When did its name change?

Later, when I took over the page, we started putting it in pictures to see if anyone would notice. People started asking, ‘What’s with the duck?’ I wouldn’t say anything about it. Then we changed the name to Duck of Justice (DOJ), which was a play on words for Department of Justice. It’s not really a riveting story, but that’s exactly what happened.