Office of the Chief

A Message from Chief Joel Dolan

Welcome to the Salem, New Hampshire Police Department page. I hope as you look around you will find all the information you may be looking for. The Salem Police Department is a professional police agency offering a variety of services. I am honored to work alongside such a dedicated and committed group. We are fortunate to have strong community support, and we look forward to building continued trust with our residents, businesses, and visitors.

We have entered into the process to become a nationally accredited agency through the Commission on Accreditation on Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA). This exhaustive process includes a complete review of our policies, practices, and procedures. Obtaining accreditation will allow us to join a small percentage of agencies nationwide who have achieved this distinction, and ensure our operating policies are current and aligned with industry best practices.

In a post-pandemic world, we will look to continue many of our popular community programs including the Citizen's Police Academy, National Night Out, Coffee with a Cop, and Summer Youth Program. We have made a commitment to community outreach and recently expanded our programs to include Rape Aggression Defense (RAD) training. As a progressive agency, we are always pursuing fresh ideas to increase our presence in the community.

We are working on ways to make this page more interactive and have some programs we are excited to roll out. We have recently developed a way to provide an online reporting system to make the process of reporting minor incidents more efficient and user-friendly. We will be rolling out crime mapping, so you can monitor calls for service in your neighborhood. As our policies are rewritten, we will work to make them public-facing to aid in transparency.

Please do not hesitate to contact us for any reason. Someone is always here to help and provide answers or guidance.