Former chief wanted special town meeting so voters could decide his fate.
By Terry Karkos
Staff Writer

BETHEL – At Monday night’s Board of Selectmen meeting, fired Police Chief Darren M. Tripp requested that selectmen hold a special town meeting asking voters to overturn or uphold his job termination.

Acting board Chairman Reggie Brown and Selectmen Al Barth, Jack Cross and Don Bennett voted 4-0 to deny the request.

Chairman Harry Dresser Jr. was away on vacation.

Tripp’s firing on Feb. 12 by Town Manager Scott Cole was upheld by a 3-2 selectmen vote March 11 at Tripp’s termination appeal hearing.

As a result of the board’s decision, Tripp said he would circulate a petition to Bethel’s registered voters to overturn or uphold Cole’s personnel actions in terminating his job.

Selectmen based their decision on a letter from town attorney Geoff Hole, who said he wasn’t aware of any legal basis whereby voters can overturn or uphold personnel actions.

“Pursuant to the town’s personnel rules and regulations, the matter has been appealed to the Board of Selectmen, and that appeal has been denied,” Hole said.

He did not believe Tripp had any other local remedies.

Then, later in the meeting, selectmen voted 4-0 accepting Bennett’s “motion of support for the Bethel Police Department.”

It was a reaffirmation, Bennett said, of last year’s overwhelming vote by Bethel residents to keep their department.

“This is done with the sincere desire on my part to reassure residents that these wishes are fulfilled, and the hope that a healing process can begin after a trying time,” he added.

Prior to the vote, Bennett said he learned that “there seems to be the perception out there that somehow, somewhere there’s a plan to dissolve or disband the police department.”

That is not true, he added.

Later in the meeting, past Bethel police chief Eric Wight of Bethel asked for and gained permission from the board to reflect on the healing process to which Bennett alluded.

“This whole thing has been extremely painful, having been on Darren’s side,” Wight said. “I think the process did work, but it made a very, very deep rift in the Town of Bethel. Apparently, it’s a done deal.”

Wight said it isn’t easy to be a police chief.

“No one can do the job without making mistakes, but you don’t get fired for them,” he added.

Tripp, however, did get fired by Cole for failing to maintain contact with the Oxford County radio dispatch center, and for failing to respond from inside the police station for 12 minutes on Dec. 2 to repeated attempts by dispatchers using four separate communication methods to alert him about an armed robbery that had just occurred in Bethel.

At his termination hearing on March 9 and 11 by selectmen, Tripp swore under oath that the station’s phone did not ring.

Town Clerk Christen Mason said otherwise, that she heard the phone, which has a distinctive ring.

During deliberations on March 11, selectmen voted 4-1 that the phone rang.

When asked if they’d reconsider their March 11 vote to uphold Cole’s firing of Tripp, Brown and Barth said they had no intention of changing their votes.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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