Former Hancock Police Chief Andrew Wood avoids jail time for claiming to work in Hancock, Richmond simultaneously
Published: 01-14-2025 7:30 PM
Modified: 01-14-2025 9:02 PM |
The former chief of the Hancock Police Department will avoid jail time for repeatedly claiming to have been working in Hancock and Richmond simultaneously, according to terms of a plea agreement reached in Merrimack County Superior Court on Tuesday.
Andrew Wood, 56, of Fitzwilliam, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of theft by unauthorized taking.
Under the agreement, he received a one-year suspended sentence and will pay the Town of Richmond $12,055.03 for what a state attorney general investigation found were “many instances of overlapping time worked” between 2017 and 2019.
He had been indicted in September 2022 on Class A felonies of theft by unauthorized taking and theft by deception. A Class A felony is punishable by 7 1/2 to 15 years in state prison and a $4,000 fine.
Wood was police chief in Hancock for 12 years, also serving as the officer-in-charge in Richmond until that department was dissolved in 2019 for what Richmond Select Board member Andrew Wallace said at the time were financial reasons, according to previous reporting by the Ledger-Transcript.
Wood submitted his resignation as Hancock police chief in September 2020, as of Dec. 31 of that year, stating in a Facebook post that “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.” However, a Hancock Select Board investigation determined that the town had cause to fire Wood for consistently submitting “inaccurate and false” time cards and not being able to adequately explain them.
As one example of the overlapping hours, town leaders said that time records show that on New Year’s Day in 2017, Wood claimed to have worked from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. in Hancock and from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Richmond. The two towns are about 45 minutes from each other. The town also found that Wood had hired an officer who had previously sexually harassed a female subordinate and was no longer certified to work in law enforcement.
Wood’s hourly rate in Richmond was $28.50. The $12,055.03 he is required to pay is for 423 hours. Hancock Town Administrator Jonathan Coyne said Tuesday that he was not involved in the prosecution of Wood and had “no idea” why Hancock wasn’t receiving a restitution payment in addition to the one Richmond is receiving.
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Wood, dressed in a dark gray suit and sporting a bushy white beard, answered questions about his understanding of the sentence during a 13-minute sentencing hearing on Tuesday, but declined to address the court about his conduct or speak to reporters afterward.
“You’ve taken an important step today; you’ve take responsibility for your action,” Judge Martin Honigberg told Wood. “You made a series of mistakes that led you here today. Everyone in this process hopes you will not make further mistakes in the future of any sort.”
Wood’s plea terms involve a fully suspended yearlong sentence in a house of corrections, which he will not serve if he remains on good behavior over the next two years. The terms also bar him from contesting decertification from the state’s Police Standards and Training Council and from being placed on the state’s exculpatory evidence schedule, a list of law enforcement officers with credibility or other issues.
Richmond’s three selectmen and its town administrator did not respond to a request for comment.
In a letter sent to Hancock officials in 2020, Wood initially defended some of his time card discrepancies, telling them that Richmond’s time card policy required him to record a minimum of four hours per court visit and a minimum of one hour per phone call regardless of how long the work actually took. He also said that some of the seemingly overlapping hours were a result of attending training sessions required by both departments.
“Given the passage of time, it is certainly difficult to gie [sic] precise details of dates and shifts,” he wrote.
Previous reporting from the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript was used in this story.
Jeremy Margolis can be contacted at jmargolis@cmonitor.com.