WOODSTOCK — Before the start of this week’s hearing of the Village Board of Trustees to again attempt to demote Police Chief Joseph Swanson, Municipal Manager Eric Duffy approached Swanson’s attorney, Linda Fraas, to shake her hand.
Fraas refused. It was prelude to the two days of contentious testimony that unfolded at the quasi-judicial hearing before the five trustees, acting as the jury, and Burlington lawyer Brian Monaghan, acting as judge.
“The Village of Woodstock has a homophobia problem,” Fraas said. “This is not widespread. This is a few bad actors.”
Specifically, she alleged Duffy, who first placed Swanson on paid administrative leave in October 2024 after a road rage incident involving Swanson’s husband, was motivated by bias.
On Monday and Tuesday, construction noise next door to the Masonic Lodge, where this week’s two full-day hearings were held, frequently caused the walls, tables and chairs to quake.
Accompanying the jackhammering outside was Fraas’ hammering away in her questioning of Duffy, whom she derisively referred to at one point as “the king of Woodstock.”
“Arrogant… hubris… corrosive… above the law,” she said.
Kendall Hoechst, the attorney representing the village, objected to Fraas’ “personal attacks.”
“We’re back to ‘the town manager cannot be criticized,’ ” Fraas retorted.
Monaghan overruled Hoechst’s objection. Hoechst represented the village this week instead of prior counsel John Klesch due to potential conflicts of interest. Klesch is representing Duffy, the town, the village, trustee Seton McIlroy and interim Chief Sgt. Chris O’Keefe in a a $5 million civil suit Swanson filed last May.
“(Duffy’s) like a lint collector,” Fraas went on. “He’s collecting all these little pieces of inconsequential things, things that would not rise to the level of dismissal, retroactively soliciting complaints, collecting them, putting every little piece from all these different areas into a ball and then he presents them … as if it were a diamond.”
‘Underlying attitudes’
This week’s hearing was in many ways a replay of a similar hearing held last March. The trustees upheld Duffy’s decision to demote Swanson last April.
In December, a Superior Court judge reversed the demotion, ruling trustees had run afoul of state law when they determined they did not need to find cause for demoting Swanson, since he wasn’t being terminated from the department. In response, the trustees held this week’s hearing in an effort to demote Swanson in a way that would pass legal muster.
Swanson, who is recovering from surgery for a shooting injury sustained while on duty in 2022, was not present at this week’s hearings, which was held in public at his request. In-person attendance was sparse, but virtual attendance peaked at around 90 when the connection was functioning properly.
Duffy was called to the witness stand on Monday morning and testified into Tuesday, stepping down just before a lunch break at around 12:30 p.m.
During questioning, Duffy reiterated that it was the totality of complaints against Swanson that led to the decision for demotion. Fraas cross-examined Duffy on more than 20 newly introduced affidavits and exhibits, which were largely admitted into evidence by the trustees despite Hoechst’s objections.
The bulk of Fraas’ exhibits and affidavits concerned alleged double standards in Woodstock.
For instance, one of the allegations against Swanson was that he would get haircuts while on duty. Fraas presented photographic evidence that interim Chief O’Keefe also received a haircut while on duty at Trustee Brenda Blakeman’s Woodstock salon, First Impressions.
Coupled with the O’Keefe haircut exhibit, Blakeman is seen in another photograph giving the photographer, Swanson’s husband, Nicholas Seldon, the middle finger. Fraas compared this exhibit of a trustee making an obscene gesture to multiple complaints alleging that Swanson used foul language.
Fraas countered Swanson’s alleged mismanagement of the police department with exhibits alleging unanswered emails to the police and O’Keefe’s mishandling of a sexual assault case.
Fraas also confirmed with Duffy on the stand that since O’Keefe took over, seven staff members, including two full-time officers, two part-time officers, a dispatcher, a part-time dispatcher and, as Duffy identified them, “a parking person,” has left the department.
The most extensive exhibit Fraas introduced in support of the argument of disparate treatment contained more than 60 pages of complaints against Duffy from former employees alleging a toxic work environment and the public outraged over the treatment of Swanson and overall management of the town.
“Duffy’s employees complain about him; it’s cause for celebration, it’s cause for bonuses, raises,” Fraas said, referencing Duffy’s contract which was updated in December 2025 and increased his salary to $176,000 per year. His original contract, which was signed in 2022 for an indefinite period of time, included an annual salary of $130,000.
“It’s the underlying attitudes and stereotypes that influence the perceptions … about gay people,” she said.
Moreover, she asked, weighing the allegations against Swanson that ultimately led to his attempted demotion, “what heterosexual person has ever been scrutinized like Chief Swanson for his clothing, his hair, his demeanor?”
Many of the complaints lodged during the marathon hearing last March, and later rehashed in a written order by the trustees, focused on Swanson’s management style, including that he did not always adhere to specific working hours or was absent during the day, kept a messy office and sometimes reported for duty out of uniform.
Police employees also alleged that Swanson did not respond to investigatory matters in a timely or thorough way and was inconsistent or unresponsive in exercising discipline.
New evidence
Superior Court Judge Dickson Corbett’s December order reversing Swanson’s demotion left it up to the trustees to “decide whether to pursue further removal proceedings and how to handle petitioners’ employment duties in the meantime.”
After the ruling, Duffy again placed Swanson on administrative leave with patrol pay and Fraas quickly filed a contempt order against the trustees for not following the judge’s orders. She withdrew the motion in January after the village agreed to change Swanson’s status back to chief, though he is still on administrative leave.
Duffy more than once defended his actions in regards to Swanson’s demotion as “doing what’s best for the municipality.”
“I’m not homophobic,” Duffy said during cross examination. “He was hired (because) he was the only viable candidate … There were qualities of Joseph Swanson that I found attractive that could be beneficial. Unfortunately, those did not come to fruition.”
During direct examination of Duffy, Hoechst also introduced a number of exhibits that were not part of last year’s hearing, including evidence alleging Swanson skipped traffic court; that the dispatcher’s union did in fact unanimously vote no confidence in Swanson’s leadership; and unsubstantiated allegations as serious as Swanson drinking while on duty, which did not form the basis for any discipline.
Exhibits introduced by Hoechst also detailed Duffy’s decision-making process since the initial October 2024 road rage incident.
On Tuesday, after Duffy concluded his testimony, Fraas attempted to call two additional witnesses to the stand: Blakeman, who was photographed making the obscene gesture at Swanson’s husband, and Trustee Jeffrey Kahn, who Fraas said had information on the underlying road rage incident from 2024.
Hoechst objected to both trustees being called to the stand, arguing that the trustees are the “fact finders” in this case.
Monaghan, the lawyer serving as judge for the proceeding, sustained both objections. “It would be akin to having a juror or a judge testify,” he said.
The trustees did permit Hoechst to call an expert witness via Zoom, Georgia-based Louis Dekmar, to offer a rebuttal to an affidavit introduced by Fraas that was written by Richard Mello, a former Lebanon Police chief who reviewed the outside investigation launched by Duffy following the October 2024 road rage incident.
Mello concluded that the investigation, conducted by William Burgess of Burgess Loss Prevention Associates, “should not be relied on as fact,” adding that the report “is nothing more than recounting rumors from unnamed employees.”
Dekmar, whose resume includes decades of work in law enforcement and municipal management, testified on Tuesday that the allegations brought against Swanson appeared to be fundamental failures of leadership.
During cross examination, Fraas challenged Dekmar’s expertise with police policy and law in the state of Vermont. Fraas also asked Dekmar if he ever “dealt with allegations against a gay police officer,” to which he answered he had, estimating around a dozen instances.
“Have you ever found any of those investigations motivated by bias?” Fraas asked.
“No,” he said. “Not for an internal investigation.”
Leading by example
In closing arguments late Tuesday afternoon, Fraas, who has called the actions taken against Swanson a “witch hunt,” went first.
“I fully expect that you will dismiss everything I have to say,” she said to the trustees, adding that she intends to present an appellate court with a record of this week’s proceedings and what she believes to be a foregone conclusion in favor of the town. “I do not believe in any way, sense or shape that a Superior Court will look at what has happened here and decide that it comports with any concept of just cause or fairness or due process.”
In Hoechst’s closing argument, she listed numerous instances of alleged misconduct that the trustees found to be fact last April when they upheld Duffy’s demotion of Swanson.
“The chief must lead by example,” Hoechst said. “No one in the whole community of Woodstock will follow the policies or follow the law if the chief is willing to break or bend when it comes to rules applicable to himself or others.”
With the hearing concluded, the trustees will begin deliberations and are expected to issue a written decision within two weeks. However, as with last year’s process, the decision will not be made available to the public unless Swanson chooses to share it.