Dublin Police Chief Timothy Suokko answered questions about vehicle inspections, ICE and the mutual aid agreement with Hancock’s Police Department at a recent Select Board meeting. He also discussed statistics for the start of 2026.
Fire Chief Tom Vanderbilt and EMS Deputy Chief K Vanderbilt highlighted recent expenditures and statistics in a meeting that also saw Select Board members discuss the library’s sinkhole.
Board members asked Suokko about the recent decision by the state government to pause House Bill 2, which repealed New Hampshire’s mandatory annual vehicle safety and emissions inspection program. According to the New Hampshire Division of Motor Vehicles website, “under state law passed last year, New Hampshire’s required vehicle inspection program was scheduled to end on Jan. 31, 2026. However, before that change took effect, a federal court ordered the state to keep the inspection program in place for now.”
“The latest guidance we received stated the law was paused due to an EPA lawsuit,” Suokko said. “The state had to hold off on the bill because the EPA said it violated some federal emissions law.”
Suokko said stickers will be required at least until April, but the state is allowing extensions. “If you haven’t gotten your inspection done and you’re overdue, we’re allowing for extensions due to the unexpected change,” he stated.
For Suokko, annual inspections are important. “The real issue is the safety aspect. Emissions I’m less worried about, but if a vehicle’s lights, tires or ball bearings are in need of repair, it’s important to get those fixed,” he said.
Select Board member Blake Minckler asked about federal ICE activities. Suokko said he had not been in contact with or asked questions about the federal immigration enforcement agency.
“Questions I’ve seen come up in towns with the 287(g) agreement is whether the police will assist federal officers,” Minckler said.
According to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement website, “the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 added Section 287(g) to the Immigration and Nationality Act, authorizing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to delegate state and local law enforcement officers the authority to perform specified immigration officer functions under ICE’s direction and oversight.”
Minckler asked Suokko whether his department was going to abide by 287(g).
“No, we don’t have the capacity to assist with federal work,” Suokko said. “Immigration isn’t under our purview .”
Minckler questioned Suokko what his officers would do at a traffic stop if the person had a detention order from ICE.
Suokko said the officers could cite the person if there was a state infraction, but they wouldn’t detain the person for ICE. “We’d let the feds know we had contact with the person,” he said, adding that unless the officers had a signed judicial warrant or the person violated other laws, they wouldn’t be able to arrest them.
Suokko also mentioned needing to talk with Hancock’s Police Department about the towns’ mutual aid agreement. “We’ve had a relationship with Hancock for a number of years where if they needed help, they’d call us,” he said. He noted Cheshire County has a similar system in place for its towns, but the one between Dublin and Hancock is separate from that system.
“In the last three years, we’ve only responded to a handful of Hancock’s calls,” Suokko said. He raised concerns about Hancock Police Chief Terry Choate having not completed recertification for his position as of Feb. 2.
“Since taking over, Hancock’s police chief has been working under a waiver,” Suokko said. “He needs to submit his law package to the academy to get recertified.”
Suokko’s main concern was that though Choate had been in the position since October, he still had not submitted the law package. “After all this time, he’s still uncertified and under waiver. As the only full-time police officer in Hancock, he doesn’t have any other certified full-time employees,” Suokko said. He said he is apprehensive about having his officers answer Hancock’s calls without a fully certified officer on its roster.
“Before any major decisions are made, I need to talk further with Hancock’s police chief,” he said.
In a phone call, Choate said he retired from law enforcement in 2017. After taking on the position as Hancock’s police chief in 2025, he was required to get recertified. He said he has submitted the law package needed to do so.
“If you’ve been out of law enforcement for more than three years, typically you have to go back to the academy,” he said. “However, when I submitted my paperwork to the academy, the board that approves the paperwork gave me an exception and said I only needed to take a few classes to become fully certified.”
Choate cited staffing shortages as a primary reason behind the exception. “When departments are short-staffed, it’s common for the academy to offer exceptions to policy.”
He said he will start classes in May and that there is a two-year window for recertification.
Choate added, “The situation has had zero impact on the Hancock Police Department’s operations.”
Other areas of note Suokko highlighted were the department’s statistics. “Overall, annually, we’re up a bit in most areas,” he said. “We’ve had an increase in arrests and traffic-related incidents.” He noted recent snowfalls have kept the department busy, but there haven’t been any major incidents.
Representatives from the Dublin Fire Department were also present at the meeting.
Deputy Chief K Vanderbilt said the Fire Department recently bought three thermal imaging cameras for $11,295 using money from the Phyllis Burt Fire Fund.
Fire Chief Tom Vanderbilt said the cameras are standard equipment, used for search and rescue operations and for looking for people or animals that might be inside a burning building.
“It’s pretty much a given they’re going to be one of your tools these days,” Tom Vanderbilt said. The cameras are used for a variety of purposes, such as search and rescue, looking for victims or animals caught in building fires, and searching for weak places, among other things.
“The cameras are also good for seeing what we can’t,” K Vanderbilt added. “If we get called to an alarm and can’t see visible fire when we arrive, we have to assume something made the alarm go off.”
Firefighters can use the camera to search inside the walls of a building for hot spots.
“If the alarm went off in a hallway, we can point the camera at the walls,” she said. The cameras view heat in color, with red indicating hot, yellow meaning mild, and green or blue representing cooler areas.
The Vanderbilts said the fire department has bought 12 items using the Burt Fund since its inception in early 2007. They said the fund accrues enough interest that when it is used, it generally recovers quickly enough that adding money is unnecessary.
K Vanderbilt emphasized that none of the money for the new equipment will come out of the town budget. “We don’t want to impact the taxpayers,” she stated. “The Phyllis Burt Fire Fund and the donation are non-taxpayer funded.”
The Fire Department is also applying for a Local Emergency Operations Grant to update its emergency operations plan. “The LEO grant will be about $8,000. We have to match half of the grant, so we’re paying $4,000, but we have the option to do it in cash or in kind. If we do it in kind, it shouldn’t cost us any money,” K said.
The fire officials said the department has responded to 13 rescue calls and two fire calls since the start of the year. Those calls included dispatching a tanker truck to Francestown last week to help at the Jan. 25 fire that destroyed the historic Governor Levi Woodbury Homestead.
In other news, the Select Board proposed instituting a Library Sinkhole Sub-Committee to review bids for solving the issue.
Select Board member Carole Monroe said the committee should focus on identifying the best group to handle both the sinkhole and the drainage issue.
“Chris said the sinkhole is being caused by a cavity,” Select Board Chair Susan Peters added, referring to former Select Board member Chris Raymond.
Minckler said he thinks the two may be associated. “The cavity could be from water flowing underneath.”
Monroe asked whether creating the sub-committee was the correct approach, as the board will have to sell the idea to Dublin residents at the annual town meeting. “The work is going to be solved and decided by the professionals doing the work,” she said. “We want this article to go through because we want to solve this problem.”
Peters said the people on the committee must have expertise in property management.
Monroe said the committee should be collaborative and should work with Fieldstone Land Consultants, PLLC, the company originally assigned to assessing the sinkhole. “We’ve never had Fieldstone give a presentation on their findings,” she said. “We should give them an opportunity to present to the sub-committee.”
Following Fieldstone’s two previous attempts to assess the sinkhole, the Select Board didn’t approve of the information reported.
Minckler highlighted the Select Board’s relationship with Fieldstone. “We should maintain our relationship with them and keep things as amicable as possible,” he said. “Even if we weren’t happy with the previous findings they reported, that shouldn’t prevent us from working with them again.”
“We want to go into the town meeting prepared. It’s important to have a conversation with Fieldstone because it’ll come up at the town meeting,” Peters said. She said the Select Board should also take ownership of its own level of knowledge regarding the issue.
“The board won’t pursue a refund from Fieldstone,” Monroe said. “They’re a responsible group. If we didn’t get an adequate response from them, we probably didn’t ask the right questions.”
Monroe said the problem likely wasn’t explained to Fieldstone in such a way that the company could provide an adequate report on the sinkhole. “We should have a better, more informed set of questions for them to get a more adequate report,” she added.