Anthony Cambridge Speaks Out

Former Hinesburg Police Chief gives his side of the story

For more than 11 years Anthony Cambridge has served the town of Hinesburg, first as an officer and then for the last five years as chief. By all accounts he has served the town well. His only employment review in those years was in 2023 and was “completely positive.”

But now he is unemployed, his reputation is in tatters, he doubts he’ll ever get another police job and says he remains “in the dark” as to why he was “smeared” and “investigated” after he gave notice in order to take a similar post with the town of Richmond, a job he was promised but then denied.

Making the matter more complicated is that for several years, Richmond and Hinesburg have had an unusual cooperative agreement in which Richmond has paid Hinesburg for police services, including half of Cambridge’s salary.

Many in town have read stories in VTDigger and The Citizen — all based on internal Hinesburg communications between Hinesburg Town Manager Todd Odit and several police officers, including one who has since left.

At no time, Cambridge said, has Odit or the selectboard ever asked him about any of the accusations made against him.

The Hinesburg Record believed that it was important to hear Cambridge’s side of the story and so sat down with him and his wife, Amy, in an interview that lasted nearly three hours.

Unfortunately, this story only presents Cambridge’s perspective; the other principal in this story, Odit, declined to comment to The Record saying “it would be unwise to put out any public statements” given, he said, that Cambridge might sue the town.

Filing a lawsuit, Cambridge said, is the last thing he wants to do. “I just want to get my name back.”

Richmond Town Manager Josh Arneson has said that the town would not comment on the matter.

Cambridge is accused — in emails, letters and texts released by the Town of Hinesburg to the media — of shredding documents, of using electronic devices to spy on his fellow officers and, perhaps, even those in town hall and of hoarding town property — including weapons — at his home. Further, news accounts revealed that in 2022 and 2023 multiple accounts on Front Porch Forum were created from the Cambridge’s home IP address in Richmond.

Standing alone, the accusations don’t amount to any violation of law, but Cambridge said the inferences are damaging, unfair and/or untrue. And they have cost him his job. In the interview with The Record and in a post on Facebook, Cambridge went through the accusations one by one. He also gave an account of what happened after he gave notice.

Yes, he said, he shredded documents. “I did so in front of the other officers. They were personal documents.” In fact, he said, they were mostly extra copies of tickets issued by the department’s officers that he’d asked them to provide him. The originals, he said, are still intact.

No, he never spied on his officers though he, like his predecessors, had access to the internal cameras in headquarters from his cellphone “so I could see who was in the office.” Only the cameras in the headquarters’ conference room had audio capability.

Yes, he did reset all the cameras in Hinesburg’s police headquarters near the end of his tenure but said he was unaware until much later that in doing so, he had erased some of the previous days’ recordings. Cameras had a four-day retention.

No, he had no way of recording or listening to anything that went on in Town Hall.

Yes, he had two weapons at his house and he also had five grips. “I got the men new grips for their guns because they didn’t like the ones that came with the guns.” He also had walkie talkies that had been purchased at WalMart because he couldn’t get authorization to get proper radios. “We had a huge dead zone on the Richmond Road” and other parts of Richmond and Hinesburg where they also couldn’t get cell phone service. “They were lime green. They were walkie talkies. And I returned them.”

He added that he saw a photograph of what he had returned in a mid-February meeting with Arneson. The photo had been taken by Hinesburg and sent to Arneson with the misinformation that the grips were weapons.

No, he never made multiple accounts on Front Porch Forum. His wife, Amy, said yes, she had made multiple accounts that were eventually blocked by FPF. “All this was dealt with in 2023,” Cambridge said. “Hinesburg knew about it. Richmond knew about it. Why is it coming up now?”

The root of the problem, Cambridge said, was his relationship with Odit.

“I always said you never want to say anything negative about the person you work for, but he’s a difficult person to work for. … It was really stressful working for him. He would summon you to his office… like you were being sent to the principal’s office.”

A major issue, Cambridge said, was Odit’s restrictive control of the police budget and that the fees Richmond was paying to the town were not going towards the needs of the police department, including raises for the officers and necessary equipment and repairs.

The troubles intensified last October when the selectboard began discussions of the new year’s budget. Richmond had hired its own officer and was talking about reconstituting its police department. Cambridge had helped Richmond hire its new officer and Richmond’s pay scale was higher than Hinesburg’s officers.

Cambridge said he had repeatedly asked Odit for raises for his officers, particularly since they were now required to patrol twice as much area as they were initially paid to cover in order to provide the contracted police services in Richmond. But now, he said, he was faced with cutbacks.

Largely because of his difficulties with Odit, the potential for budget cuts and word that several of his officers were considering applying for jobs in Richmond where they could be paid more, Cambridge went to selectboard chair Merrily Lovell.

“She stated that she was concerned the budget wouldn’t pass and that while she wanted to keep the positions in Hinesburg, this might be solved if a couple officers went over to Richmond. I told her that I’ve had conversations with (other Hinesburg officers) about that and they said they would not go without me. She said maybe I should go, too, and said she thinks I would be better off if I didn’t work with Todd anymore.”

In a telephone interview, Lovell did confirm that conversation and that she had suggested to Cambridge to apply for the Richmond job. To other questions, she declined to comment to The Record; asked whether the selectboard had ever talked to Cambridge about the accusations, she said she “could not recall,” adding that managing Cambridge was Odit’s responsibility.

Shortly after talking to Lovell last October, Cambridge spoke to Odit. “He said maybe we can fix the budget problem if I went over to Richmond and took one or two officers. I asked him if he would be okay flipping the contract, and he said it would be fine.” Again, Odit declined to comment to The Record about that conversation.

Cambridge applied and Richmond then undertook a background investigation of Cambridge even though he’d technically been their chief for the previous 18 months. During that time, he said, three Hinesburg officers interviewed with Richmond and a fourth applied. After the two-month background check was completed, Richmond offered Cambridge the job. Initially Richmond wanted him to start in December 2024, but Cambridge had a planned vacation. He signed the hire letter on Jan. 6, 2025, to start Feb. 18.

“An hour after I signed, Todd sent me a text message that he wanted to speak to me. I met with him the next day. He told me, ‘You blindsided me. … I thought this was over, that you weren’t going because it took so long.’”

Cambridge formally resigned on January 8, effective February 17. That night, at the selectboard meeting, a Hinesburg resident told the board she was upset that Cambridge was leaving and criticized Odit as being the cause. Odit texted Cambridge and the next day the two met.

“He was furious that she called him out publicly,” Cambridge said. He accused Cambridge of telling the resident about his departure and putting her up to making the call. Later, Odit and Lovell spoke with the resident, Cambridge said, and discovered that the woman had not spoken with Cambridge and had learned the news in a Front Page Forum post made by the town of Richmond.

“I think that was part of the downfall,” Cambridge said. “Todd was going to get blamed for losing me and … for losing the rest of the department (if they followed him to Richmond) and then Todd was going to get blamed for not having a contract” whereby Hinesburg would be paid for police services.

Over the next two weeks, Cambridge said, the following happened:

Jan. 9: Odit told an officer in Town Hall that he would be stopping by to announce raises for the officers and that Cambridge had never asked for raises. Everyone except Cambridge received raises the next week.

Jan. 11: Cambridge spoke to Lovell telling her that Odit was clearly trying to keep the officers from going to Richmond and that “it was untrue that I never asked for raises.” Cambridge said Lovell confirmed he’d asked for raises over the two years and “told me to tell the officers that if any of them doubted that to call her and she would confirm that.”

Jan. 15: Odit sent an email telling Cambridge to turn in all Hinesburg property upon his departure, February 17.

Jan. 17: On Front Porch Forum, Lovell wrote that the selectboard had a discussion with Cambridge and “the collaboration with Richmond would remain essentially the same, except that now Richmond would be paying his salary and Hinesburg would be paying Richmond half the Chief’s salary.” On that same day, Odit informed Cambridge that the department’s credit card had been cancelled.

Jan. 21: One of the Hinesburg police officers told Cambridge “‘Todd and Josh (Arneson, Richmond Town Manager) are trying to build a case against you to get rid of you.’ …  He said Todd made him print out all my cases, call volume, scanned documents, time sheets and he said that Todd was going through old emails too and had been calling him all day.” (Again, Arneson has said there would be no comment on the matter.)

The same day: “I received an email from Todd saying that I was not to have contact with the selectboard unless it was approved by him or Joy (Joy Dubin Grossman, the assistant town manager) first. And if they contacted me, I should tell them to contact him or Joy first.” This email was sent to all Hinesburg town department heads.

Jan. 22: At a scheduled meeting with Arneson to go over details of his new job, David Sander, then chair of the Richmond selectboard, was also there, and they “said that an officer had some concerns and asked me about the camera system. Josh also stated that the officer wondered if he was being recorded because I knew a lot of things that I shouldn’t know. … I showed Josh my phone and how the cameras worked. There was no audio recording on the camera he was referencing.”

Jan 23: Hearing word that the officer who had apparently spoken to Arneson and several times to Odit was meeting in executive session with the Hinesburg selectboard, he resigned from Hinesburg, effective immediately. “The situation had reached a point where I couldn’t work under these conditions anymore.”

After that, Cambridge said, “the Richmond job started to fall apart.” His start was delayed and then on February 25, the VTDigger story came out. “The first time I heard about all these accusations was on the 24th when VTDigger called me and asked for a statement.”

Cambridge asked to meet with the Richmond selectboard in executive session. That request was denied. “Richmond then asked me to return all my Richmond equipment and eventually (was) given a date to resign or the offer would be rescinded.

“I could not bring myself to resign knowing that I had done nothing worth losing my job over.”

On March 3, the town of Richmond announced it was not moving forward with the appointment of Cambridge as police chief. Two weeks later, both the Richmond and Hinesburg selectboards announced they would soon sit down to hammer out a new contract for police services.