By Brian Kevin
From our December 2024 issue
The thing about the Holden Police Department is that if Holden wasn’t bisected by a busy stretch of Route 1A, shuttling drivers between the interstate and MDI, the Penobscot County town of a few thousand people might not even need its own police force. The late Chris Greeley — chief of the Holden PD from 2015 until his death last year, after a brief illness, at age 60 — understood this. Ironically, it’s part of what nudged him to launch the initiative that’s made the Holden PD a model for police departments nationwide.
It’s called 25 Days of Kindness, although current police chief Eduardo Benjamin will be the first to tell you that the enterprise has outgrown its original holiday interval, the 25 days leading up to Christmas. But that’s how Greeley conceived of it, back in 2017, when he carved a little budget out of the department’s coffee fund and augmented it by bringing in the station’s returnables. Take this pocket money, he told his officers, and spend it on small acts of generosity during the holidays: buy someone a cup of coffee, hand out toys or stuffed animals to kids, pay for a neighbor’s heating oil. The effort was an offshoot of Greeley’s commitment to community policing, the philosophy that law-enforcement agencies — particularly those whose main purview is traffic issues on Route 1A — should devote themselves to strengthening communities and preventing crime by building trust and relationships around town.
Greeley grew up in Bangor, graduated in 1995 from the Maine Criminal Justice Academy, and did stints as an officer in Veazie and Brewer before coming to Holden. He also served four terms in the Maine House of Representatives in his 40s and was a local media presence, often guest-hosting a morning show on Bangor’s WVOM radio. But it’s the 25 Days of Kindness he’ll be most remembered for. As folks in Holden saw local cops going out of their way to spread goodwill, the initiative took on its own momentum. Neighbors and businesses started pitching in, donating cash, gift cards, toys, clothes. The department’s efforts became more organized, with Greeley and his officers partnering with local organizations to determine need and share resources.
In the last seven years, Benjamin says, the department has donated utility-bill support and thousands of gallons of heating oil to Maine veterans, thousands of dollars worth of children’s gifts to Toys for Tots, Thanksgiving turkeys to church-run food pantries, countless meals in partnership with the Eastern Area Agency on Aging, and plenty more. Cable-news shows and other media outlets have sung the department’s and community’s praises.
In the wake of Greeley’s death last March, Benjamin says, the department received some $50,000 worth of donations. He and others set up a nonprofit to formally continue the work year-round — “to carry forward Chief Greeley’s legacy,” reads the mission statement, “by cultivating kindness in our community, encouraging acts of generosity, care, and compassion.”
“He really wanted people to understand the police department, that they were there to help,” says Donna Gormley-Greeley, who received more than 400 cards, many from strangers, following her husband’s death. “He wanted to make the department shine, and his way of doing that was to get to know people and what their needs were. He had a great empathy for people.”
“He just brought so much positive attention to our little town,” says Benjamin, who was running a Brazilian jiu-jitsu school in 2010 when Greeley, one of his students, recruited him for a cop job in Brewer. “Nobody knew what Holden was, you know? Now, we’re in the national news.”
Even drivers passing through on 1A know about Holden’s community spirit these days. “Welcome to Holden,” read the signs at the edge of town, “Home of Chris Greeley’s 25 Days of Kindness.”
Visit 25daysofkindness.org to read more about — and support — Holden’s homegrown community effort.
