Chief convicted of stealing
In March, former Allenstown Police Chief James McGonigle entered a guilty plea to stealing thousands of dollars from accounts reserved for the department, the New Hampshire Police Cadet Training Academy and Allenstown Police Association.

McGonigle was sentenced to 12 months for one of the charges and one to three years on two others.

He reported to Concord State Prison on June 8 to begin his sentence.

The charges stemmed from discrepancies in the books, which the department’s executive secretary, Donna Barnett, picked up on. She informed current Chief Shaun Mulholland, a captain at the time, who called the Attorney General’s office to initiate the investigation.

McGonigle, 58 of Concord, stole about $8,000 total from the three agencies beginning in 2000. Cashed checks in amounts from $5 to $1,500 were discovered. Selectmen put McGoSelectmen put McGonigle on paid leave in February 2006.

Also a long-time Concord city councilor, McGonigle resigned from both posts on April 10, 2006.

“It was a very precarious, very difficult situation to have to be in,” said Mulholland, who had to violate department policy which says that the chief must be involved in any internal investigations, to bring the chief to justice.

State police came in to run the department until Mulholland himself could take a lie detector test, which cleared him of any wrongdoing. He was then placed in charge of the department. “It’s not a great point of history in the Allenstown Police Department, but it is what it is,” said Mulholland.

Sewer expansion
A $15 million bond to expand the Suncook Wastewater Treatment plant failed with Allenstown voters a second time at the 2007 election.

The state placed a moratorium on the treatment plant in 2005, preventing any more hookups.

The plant serves both Allenstown and Pembroke, the cost to operate it divided between the two towns based on the number of hook ups. Allenstown owns the facility, and thus is responsible for passing or voting down the proposed expansion.

The town’s Sewer Commission is holding public input meetings on the expansion plan and funding in hopes of getting voters behind it this year. Selectmen have not recommended the article in the two years it has come up.

Resident Armand Verville, has spoken out against taxpayer funding and suggested the money come from sewage users, adding that he is not and would never be hooked up to the town’s infrastructure.

Michael Trainque of Hoyle, Tanner and Associates, the company in charge of the expansion plans, said a combination of federal and state grants could reduce the total project costs by 50 percent or more.

The plant has been taking on septage from other towns in a separate process from the sewer operations to help fund the expansion.

Meth lab?
U.S. marshals and Allenstown police closed in on an alleged methamphetamine lab at a mobile home on Edgewood Drive in August.

Although the home was vacant at the time, a search revealed meth production materials and equipment.

Emergency preparedness
Allenstown police and fire, along with all of its backup authorities, participated in a simulated terrorist attack on Oct. 20.

The attack was staged at Allenstown Elementary School. The scenario they played out was a parent disgruntled over school taxes, shooting several students and staff in the school and setting off a bomb.

Officers, firefighters, dispatchers and other first responders had to react to the events as they unfolded as if it were real.

While they knew it was a simulation, participants were not informed beforehard of the scenario or extent of the operation, and many were troubled at being inside the alarm- and smoke-filled building.

Local Boy Scout troops and other community organizations also participated as actors.

Missing man
An elderly Hooksett man went missing in Bear Brook State Park on Dec. 2 when he apparently got lost while hunting.

Search teams composed of agencies from all over the state looked for any trace of Russell Bussiere, 70, for the rest of that week.

A snow storm and extremely cold temperatures, particularly overnight, caused hope to dwindle that Bussiere would be found alive.

His son, Michael Bussiere, said his father had been hunting for over half a century and knows the state park area where he was hunting well, but many of the searchers and hunters alike said that it is very easy to get disoriented in the woods.

On Dec. 4, about 200 volunteers showed up to participate in line searches of more than 10 square miles of forest. Many of them had to be taken out of the woods when they got wet and cold and could not finish the search.

Teams tracked their progress on a GPS mapping system at the command post and remained in the woods for about eight hours each day.

By Dec. 6, the search had been scaled back to mutual aid agencies only, to ensure the searchers’ safety.

The missing hunter got wide press coverage, drawing Boston and regional news stations.

The family held a press conference on Dec. 6 thanking authorities and searchers for their efforts and expressing their realistic outlook that Bussiere would be found, but not alive.

Michael Bussiere said he would continue to take small parties out to Bear Brook to search for his father and hopes to find him in the spring.