Gary Dodds In Trouble With The Law Again

Gary Dodds is in trouble with the law again after he was arrested Thursday afternoon for damaging city park property.

According to Portsmouth Police, Dodds, 46, of of 525 Maplewood Ave., surrendered himself on a warrant. Dodds is charged with one count of criminal mischief (class B misdemeanor) and one count of criminal mischief (class A misdemeanor) for damaging a vine and a fence owned by the City of Portsmouth.

The fence and vine are part of a city park located at the corner of Atkinson and Court streets in Portsmouth. Dodds damaged the fence and vine on July 1 when he was doing work on an adjacent property in which he has a business interest, according to police.

Dodds was released on $2,000 personal recognizance bail and is scheduled for arraignment in Portsmouth District Court on Sept. 19 at 8:30 a.m., according to police.

Dodds, a former First Congressional District candidate in 2006, was convicted of falsifying physical evidence, leaving the scene of an accident and causing a false public alarm for staging a car accident on the Spaulding Turnpike in Dover in April of that year.

Dodds told authorities he was disoriented and wandered off into the woods near the Bellamy River. First responders found him 27 hours after the car accident under a pile of leaves in the woods. He suffered from hypothermia, but it was later determined the entire accident was staged so Dodds could help his floundering campaign bid.

While serving a one-year jail sentence in the Rockingham House of Corrections in February 2009, Dodds grabbed more headlines when he was involved in a fight with a fellow inmate, Leeland Eisenberg, who was convicted of taking hostages at Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign office in downtown Rochester. Eisenberg told his hostages that he had a bomb that turned out to be road flares that resembled dynamite.

Until his arrest on Thursday, Dodds had been a law-abiding citizen since his release from jail two years ago.