By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
HANCOCK – Already indicted for allegedly double-dipping his time sheets, former Police Chief Andrew Wood now faces the prospect of having his ability to work as a police officer revoked.
The New Hampshire Police Standards and Training Council notified the Cheshire Superior Court it plans to investigate Wood once his court case wraps up.
“Since Andrew Wood is a certified officer in the State of New Hampshire, the matter of his arrest and/or conviction may involve action under state rule,” PSTC Investigator Anna Paquin wrote in a letter sent earlier this month.
Wood, 53, was indicted in September on one class A felony count of theft by unauthorized taking and one class A felony count of theft by deception. Wood was the chief in Hancock while also serving as the officer in charge in nearby Richmond. He allegedly put down time on his Hancock timecards, and got paid by Hancock, for hours while he was also on duty in Richmond.
Whether or not he is convicted at trial, Paquin’s letter indicates he will have to go before the council once the case is done and face losing his certification. The council could vote to revoke his certification, effectively barring him from working in law enforcement in New Hampshire.
Some of the potential evidence against Wood is currently under seal, according to court records. That includes some police personnel files which are considered confidential. The motion to seal the records does not state if the files solely concern Wood, or if they include any other police officers.
Wood’s hiring of former Winchester Police Officer Nathan Jette in Hancock also became a point of contention. Jette lost his own PSTC certification after he was disciplined for sexually harassing a female police officer he was supposed to be training, according to Hancock’s initial investigation.
Wood announced he was retiring from law enforcement in 2020, blaming anti-police sentiment part of the Black Lives Matters protests. The 2020 protests were the result of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, caught on video. The largely peaceful protests spread throughout the country during the summer of 2020, though some cities saw extensive damage during the ensuing civil unrest.
“With the events involving law enforcement throughout this country, I have decided that I have completed all of the tasks that I set out to accomplish in Hancock,” Wood wrote in his public resignation letter.
He further said that he wanted to focus on the comfort dog program he started in Hancock with a dog that was donated to him by a local breeder.
What Wood did not mention in his public letter was the fact he had actually been fired from his post by the Hancock Select Board after the board’s investigation uncovered his alleged fraudulent timecards.
“A review of your timesheets for the Towns of Hancock and Richmond, as well as dispatch logs, demonstrates a pattern of inaccurate, and false timesheet entries,” the Hancock Board of Selectmen state in a letter sent to Wood after the investigation.
The investigation found Wood clocked in at Hancock while also working overlapping hours in Richmond, according to the board’s letter. In many cases, the times Wood listed as having worked did not match the Hancock Police Department’s dispatch records.
For example, Wood submitted a timecard to Hancock for Jan. 1, 2017, that showed him working from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and another one to Richmond showing that he worked from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the same day. Hancock’s dispatch records indicate that Wood actually worked from 11:25 a.m. to 3:21 p.m.
“Claiming you worked for the Town of Hancock when you were in fact not working for the Town is a serious transgression that took advantage of the Town, its taxpayers, and had a detrimental effect on the management and fiscal responsibility of the Town,” the letter states.
In 2019, Wood also lost his job in Richmond when voters in that town opted to dissolve the police department in favor of a contract with the Cheshire County Sheriff’s Department.
The criminal case against Wood has already moved out of the Cheshire Superior Court due to possible conflicts of interest, and it is currently being tried in the Sullivan Superior Court.