Fired Ellsworth police chief, suspected of working drunk, opening brewery

Ellsworth’s former city manager and police chief, who was fired in March after an investigation found he likely came to work drunk one evening, is starting his own brewpub.

Glenn Moshier is a co-owner of Musquito Harbor Brewing Co., a new brewery and restaurant that he and his partners are planning to open in Winter Harbor.

The business takes its name from a prior name for the eastern Hancock County town where Moshier lives with his family. On the business’s new Facebook page , the owners cite historic maps from the 1700s and 1800s that show the name of the harbor as Musquito Harbor — spelled with a “u” — prior to the community being renamed Winter Harbor in 1854.

Moshier and his partners, doing business as Bluff Road Properties LLC, purchased the former Prospect Harbor Soap Co. building at 4 Duck Pond Rd. on May 10, according to documents filed at the Hancock County Registry of Deeds. The purchase price was unavailable from county records posted online.

Town officials said Tuesday the company has not yet applied for a local building permit or business license.

Additional information about the business was unavailable Tuesday. The owners did not respond to an email on Monday or to a business card left in the door of 4 Duck Pond Road.

Prior to pursuing the brewery, Moshier worked for the city of Ellsworth for 20 years. He first started as a police officer in 2004 and rose through the ranks to become chief in 2017. In 2021, he took on the dual role of city manager and police chief, but he decided to step down as city manager and then was fired as police chief in March.

Moshier was terminated after an investigation by the city found that he was likely intoxicated when he’d come to work on the night of Dec. 22, 2023, according to a copy of his termination letter obtained by the BDN. Although he was off-duty that evening, he ended up getting a ride with his wife to the Ellsworth police station after an officer shot a man.

Moshier later told officials that he had five beers between 5 and 9 p.m. that night, then got to the police station shortly before 11 p.m., the city council said in its termination letter. Several officers thought he was still intoxicated when he arrived because he was “acting uncharacteristically loud and emotional,” the letter said.

The council determined that Moshier had violated multiple city policies by acting unprofessionally, not reporting the incident in a timely manner, and likely being drunk when he went to work and carried his off-duty firearm.