Palmyra Safety Board Hears Evidence in Marshal's Termination; Questions Raised About Bodycams, Evidence Handling and Training

The Palmyra Safety Board on Dec. 2 held a formal hearing to decide whether to uphold the town's recent termination of town marshal Dennis Summer, hearing testimony about two traffic-stop incidents and the department's evidence and training practices.

The board admitted two incident reports as exhibits: No. 25P0476, dated Nov. 30, 2025, and supplemental report 2520449, dated Nov. 24, 2025. A reserve officer who responded to both incidents testified about each stop and about how the department handled evidence and follow-up.

The responding reserve officer, identified in the record as Zachary, said he stopped a vehicle driven by Ronald Howell on Nov. 30 for speeding and that the driver became verbally aggressive. Zachary acknowledged he did not activate his manually operated Axon body camera immediately after initiating the stop and turned it on only after returning to his patrol vehicle to request dispatch returns. "I forgot," he said of the initial failure to activate the camera; when the board played the recording, Zachary affirmed the video "accurately" reflected what happened that night.

Zachary also described a Nov. 24 stop in which officers found a syringe and, after searching the vehicle, a crystalline substance that a deputy field-tested positive for methamphetamine. He testified that evidence from that incident at times was marked for destruction rather than routed into a long-term evidence tracking process and said he had not always been confident in how that marking decision was handled.

Jack Trillion, the town's clerk treasurer, told the board he had observed items he believed were evidence sitting unsecured on top of the marshal's office safe for "several days" and that the items lacked tags identifying them. "I have never seen that," Trillion said of evidence left unsecured.

Several witnesses and the respondent raised systemic issues. The respondent, who acknowledged making human errors, said the department had relied for years on standard operating procedures more than 15 years old and that it was difficult to schedule training for reserve officers who hold full-time jobs. He asked how those systemic shortfalls factored into whether his conduct rose to the level warranting termination.

A witness said he had considered filing an arrest-warrant request after the Nov. 30 stop but, after consulting then-Chief Dennis Long, was advised not to submit a warrant immediately. Zachary said he later discussed evidence-disposition options with supervisors, including towing the vehicle for a search incident to arrest or designating seized items for destruction and using the case as a training opportunity.

Board members repeatedly questioned witnesses about chain-of-custody: whether seized items had been labeled, who transported evidence from scenes to town hall and who authorized destruction. Captain Sean Short was identified in testimony as the supervisor who transported evidence and who placed requests regarding evidence disposition.

Public comment and several board remarks underlined tension between concern for public safety and sympathy for the respondent. One commenter told the board: "The evidence speaks for itself." The respondent told the board he had served in public safety roles for decades and argued that while he had made mistakes, they did not warrant termination.

No formal final vote or board finding is recorded in the testimony admitted at the hearing's public portion of the record. The board paused to consider next steps as the hearing concluded.

What happened next: the Safety Board will consider the record and make formal findings and a decision on whether to uphold the termination. The hearing transcript shows contested facts about body-camera activation, evidence marking and whether training and outdated SOPs contributed to the incidents under review.

Key details from the record

- Exhibits admitted: Incident 25P0476 (11/30/2025) and supplemental 2520449 (11/24/2025). - Central factual issues: failure to manually activate a body camera at the start of a traffic stop; evidence from a Nov. 24 stop declared for destruction rather than entered into long-term evidence tracking; unsecured items observed on top of the marshal's office safe. - Witnesses: a reserve responding officer (Zachary), clerk treasurer Jack Trillion, references to Captain Sean Short and Deputy Nick Herod, and the respondent (Dennis).