Editing Bangor, Maine (section)

===Law and order===
In 2008 Bangor's crime rate was the second-lowest among American metropolitan areas of comparable size.<ref>[http://www.bangormaine.gov/lib_safety.php Bangor Maine: the Official Web Site of the City of Bangor] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071223225728/http://www.bangormaine.gov/lib_safety.php |date=December 23, 2007 }}. Retrieved January 18, 2008</ref> As of 2014 Bangor had the third highest rate of property crime in Maine.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://hashtagmaine.bangordailynews.com/2015/02/04/the-internets/website-ranks-maines-10-most-dangerous-cities/ |title=Website ranks Maine's 10 'most dangerous' cities  |author=Seth Koenig |date=February 4, 2015 |website=hashtagmaine.bangordailynews.com |access-date=December 12, 2015}}</ref>

The arrival of Irish immigrants from nearby Canada beginning in the 1830s, and their competition with locals for jobs, sparked a deadly sectarian riot in 1833 that lasted for days and had to be put down by militia. Realizing the need for a police force, the town incorporated as The City of Bangor in 1834.<ref name="Mundy">James H. Mundy and Earle G. Shettleworth, ''The Flight of the Grand Eagle: Charles G. Bryant, Architect and Adventurer'' (Augusta: Maine Historic Preservation Commission, 1977)</ref>  In the 1800s, sailors and loggers gave the city a reputation for roughness; their stomping grounds were known as the "Devil's Half Acre".<ref name="MAGDE">Doris A. Isaacson, ed., ''Maine: A Guide Down East'' (Rockland, Me.: Courier-Gazette, Inc., 1970), pp. 163–172</ref> The same name was also applied, at roughly the same time, to [[The Devil's Half-Acre, Pennsylvania]].

Although Maine was the first "dry" state (i.e. the first to prohibit the sale of alcohol, with the passage of the "[[Maine law]]" in 1851), Bangor managed to remain "wet". The city had 142 saloons in 1890. A look-the-other-way attitude by local police and politicians (sustained by a system of bribery in the form of ritualized fine-payments known as "The Bangor Plan") allowed Bangor to flout the nation's most long-standing state [[Prohibition in the United States|prohibition]] law.<ref>''New York Times'', January 8, 1890, p. 1; Ibid, August 30, 1903, p. 3</ref> In 1913, the war of the "drys" (prohibitionists) on "wet" Bangor escalated when the [[Penobscot County]] Sheriff was impeached and removed by the Maine Legislature for not enforcing anti-liquor laws. His successor was asked to resign by the governor the following year for the same reason, but refused. A third sheriff was removed by the governor in 1918, but promptly re-nominated by the Democratic Party. Prohibitionist [[Carrie Nation]] had been forcibly expelled from the Bangor House hotel in 1902 after causing a disturbance.<ref>"Carrie Nation Ejected", Pittsburgh Press, August 30, 1902, p. 1</ref>

In October 1937, "public enemy" [[Al Brady]] and another member of his "Brady Gang" (Clarence Shaffer) were killed in the bloodiest shootout in Maine's history. [[FBI]] agents ambushed Brady, Shaffer, and James Dalhover on Bangor's Central Street after they had attempted to purchase a [[Thompson submachine gun]] from Dakin's Sporting Goods downtown.<ref name="walsh">Bill Vanderpool "Walter R. Walsh: An Amazing Life" ''American Rifleman'' November 2010 p.84</ref> Brady is buried in the public section of Mount Hope Cemetery, on the north side of Mount Hope Avenue.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bangorinfo.com/Focus/focus_brady_gang.html|title=The Brady Gang|publisher=Bangor in Focus|access-date=February 26, 2008}}</ref> Until recently, Brady's grave was unmarked. A group of schoolchildren erected a wooden marker over his grave in the 1990s, which was replaced by a more permanent stone in 2007.<ref>''Bangor Daily News'', Friday, September 7, 2007</ref>