City Police to Have Changing of the Guard

Deputy Police Chief Stephen DuBois has known for six months that he will succeed Police Chief David "Lou" Ferland when Ferland retires in September. On Wednesday, that transition will become official when DuBois is formally welcomed as the new police chief.

The Portsmouth Police Commission will hold a ceremony on Wednesday at 6 p.m. at City Hall where DuBois will officially take the reins of the police department and Portsmouth Police Capt. Corey MacDonald will be formally introduced as the city's new deputy police chief.

DuBois and MacDonald have spent their entire law enforcement careers with the Portsmouth Police Department and worked their way up to their new posts. Ferland will also finish up a distinguished 30-year law enforcement career and recently earned his doctorate degree in criminal justice from Franklin Pierce College in leadership. He also just completed a dissertation on the history of crime and punishment in Portsmouth that dated back 12,000 years from the Abenaki Indians to the present.

after he, too, began his law enforcement career in 1993 as a patrolman and worked his way up. He also served as an auxiliary police officer in Portsmouth in 1991. He has served as deputy chief for three years and believes he is ready to lead the department.

as a police cadet, progressed to the auxiliary unit and then to a full-time police officer in 1999. Since 2009, Captain MacDonald has served as the detective division commander, and the commander of New Hampshire’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force as well as the supervising prosecuting attorney for the city.