The ordeal began with a road-rage showdown that seemed uniquely Vermont: two drivers heatedly facing off amid a leaf-peeping traffic jam near the village green in storybook Woodstock. A police investigation would later document shouted profanities and possibly a slap before the tussle came t o an end, but neither motorist chose to participate, and no charges were filed. The episode last fall might have ended there, except that one of the motorists involved was the husband of Woodstock Police Chief Joseph Swanson, who remained in the passenger seat of their car while the fracas unfolded and made no official mention of it until the next day. The October 13 incident ignited growing tensions that have ruffled sleepy Woodstock for months. It laid bare long-seething resentments toward Swanson within his police force and prompted the municipal manager, Eric Duffy, to place Swanson on administrative leave and hire a private investigator to dig into the chief's leadership. Since then, the police union and the emergency dispatcher's union each delivered a unanimous no-confidence vote in Swanson's year-and-a-half tenure as chief. At the same time, the chief's husband, attorney Nicholas Seldon, filed a lawsuit against Woodstock, normally better known for its ranking as "the prettiest small town in America." In the middle of it all, Chief Swanson — a member of a prominent local family, a former chair of the Woodstock Selectboard and a decorated police officer once wounded by a gunman during a standoff — has stubbornly rebuffed Duffy's efforts to demote him. So, on March 19, to determine Swanson's fate, the town resorted to a rarely used, quasi-judicial trial process known as a Loudermill hearing, which provides due process for certain public employees facing disciplinary action. The hearing, held in a former basement courtroom, would allow the two parties — the town on one side, Swanson on the other — to make their cases, with a Burlington lawyer hired by the town to preside. The improvised nature of the proceeding was readily evident. Behind an old judge's bench, the five members of the Woodstock Village Trustees, usually more consumed with preparing for foliage-season tourists or granting sidewalk permits for Girl Scout cookie sales, sat as jurors. The rival legal teams for the chief and town sat before them at a pair of folding tables, with a third table for witnesses. The room could accommodate only 30 spectators, who claimed all the… ...read more read less