LYME — A veteran Upper Valley police officer with deep ties to Lyme is the town’s new police chief.
Anthony (Tony) Swett was sworn in last Tuesday, succeeding Shaun O’Keefe, who retired last week after 24 years with the department. O’Keefe will continue to work part-time for the town.
Swett, whose association with Lyme police goes back more than 20 years when he joined the department as a part-time officer before later becoming police chief in Plainfield. He returned to Lyme as sergeant earlier this year.
The handoff is hardly a surprise. O’Keefe informed the Selectboard ahead of Town Meeting in March that he planned to retire this year and there was not much debate that Swett, 61, who worked closely with O’Keefe, 55, in the past, would be a logical successor.
“Chief Swett previously worked for the Lyme police department for twelve years,” she said, noting the board wanted a chief with “experience in a small closely-knit town,” Judith Brotman, chair of the Lyme Selectboard, said via email to the Valley News, noting that Swett had “settled in well” since being hired back in February.
As a result, “we feel confident that our police department will continue on the path that Chief O’Keefe has laid down,” she said.
Earlier this year, O’Keefe hired Nicholas Terino, who had worked for the previous seven years on the Nantucket (Mass.) Police Department, as the second patrol officer, rounding out the three-person department.
“Over the last three years we’ve been working hard to get good, dependable people into the department, people who would be a good fit for the town,” O’Keefe said. With that goal now behind him, O’Keefe said he felt comfortable stepping aside. He initially had set a 20-year-limit on his policing career but extended his horizon due to “having some turnover and I just couldn’t leave.”
”I always said I’d retire when it’s right, and now is the right time,” he said, noting that in addition to occasionally “filling in when the guys are taking days off” he also foresees helping out his son with his lawn care and plowing business.
“But otherwise I’m just going to enjoy retirement as best as I can,” he said.
Swett resigned as Plainfield’s chief last year after he and the then-chair of the Plainfield Selectboard — a former law enforcement officer — fell out over a personal relationship that Swett had formed with another town employee.
The rupture and fallout also resulted in the Selectboard chairman resigning.
In March, after the position had been open for seven months, Plainfield hired Erik Gutsfeld, a recently retired 25-year veteran with the Rocky Hill, Conn., police department, as the town’s police chief.
O’Keefe said he was not troubled by the circumstances behind Swett’s departure from Plainfield.
“I and the board, we did our due diligence and looked into everything as we should have. And we were not at all concerned,” he said.
Indeed, O’Keefe said, Plainfield’s loss was Lyme’s gain.
“I tried to get Tony to come back quite a few years ago but he was content in Plainfield because that’s where he lives and that’s where he wanted to stay,” O’Keefe said on Thursday. “We just sort of connected one day and I said, ‘You know, if for whatever reason you want to come back to Lyme, don’t ever forget that you’re welcome here.’ ”
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
