BETHEL – Selectmen listened to testimony Tuesday from several witnesses, Town Manager Scott Cole, and former Police Chief Darren Tripp during Tripp’s termination appeal hearing.

But at the end of four hours and summations from Tripp’s attorney, Thomas S. Carey, and Cole’s attorney, Geoff Hole, the board voted 4-1 to recess the proceedings, and reconvene at 4 p.m. Thursday, March 11, at the Crescent Park School gymnasium.

Selectman Chairman Harry Dresser Jr. asked Hole and Carey to provide selectmen with written findings of fact at Thursday’s session, after which, the board would deliberate Tripp’s fate based on evidence presented.

Selectman Jack Cross was the sole board member who said he had made up his mind, and didn’t require a second session.

Selectmen, acting as a jury in appellate capacity, are determining from evidence and testimony whether Cole’s Feb. 12 firing of Tripp was justified.

More than 200 people sat in or filtered in and out of the school’s cafeteria during the lengthy trial-like session.

A contingent of Oxford County Sheriff’s officers, including Capt. James P. Miclon, stood at the rear of the crowd, having been called there as backup by Bethel’s lone officer, Charles Beal.

Beal said that prior to the session’s start at 4 p.m., tensions were high, and more and more people kept pouring into the room.

Following a 20-minute executive session between selectmen and their attorney, John Lloyd, Dresser read a statement aimed at diffusing the crowd, many of whom came out in support of Tripp.

“Regardless of the outcome of this process, it is my hope that the divisiveness this issue has created in the town, will begin to heal,” Dresser said.

“While we will always find differences of opinion on matters of import to us all, we can accomplish considerably more as a town when we work together, than we can when we’re unnecessarily divided,” he added.

There were no disruptions from the crowd, and the county police soon left once the process got under way.

Evidence presented centered on the 12 minutes in which Tripp did not respond to Oxford County dispatchers trying to tell him that an armed robbery was in progress on Dec. 2 at the Big Apple convenience store on Railroad Street.

Cole testified that two town employees were certain that they could hear the police phone ringing inside the police station. Town Clerk Christen Mason, one of Hole’s witnesses, testified that she heard the cop phone ring, because it has a distinct sound.

“I am absolutely sure that that phone rang,” Mason said.

But Tripp and Bethel officer Phil Taylor, who were both inside the police station during the 12-minute period, said, when questioned Carey, that the phone did not ring at all.

When Carey asked Tripp to swear on his grandparents grave, with his hand on his badge and hand on a Bible, which wasn’t present, that the phone didn’t ring, Tripp said, “None of the phones rang while I was in the Bethel Police Department. At no time while I was there, did the phones ring.”

[email protected]