Innovation and taking advantage of opportunities can keep rural law enforcement successful and highly qualified to offer the best services to citizens.

What are some examples in your career where you have used innovation and opportunities to make Marquette County law enforcement more effective?

For me personally I encourage people to never turn down an opportunity. You will never know when that chance will come up again. I learned this as a young man from my father growing up in the trucking and property management business, as well as various mentors in my law enforcement career.

 

My first example would be when I became a certified firearms instructor with State of Wisconsin in 2010. I had a lot of new innovative ideas and over the years we have become a very well-trained office. I also became a certified OWI instructor and certified scenario instructor. I enjoy being able to teach and educate our staff on how to keep the public safe, themselves safe, and how to be highly trained within their skillset. When I became Captain in 2016, I was able to work with our administrative office team and continue to encourage and watch our menu of in-house instructors grow over the years. I am very proud to say our citizens and stakeholders should know how “Marquette County punches out of their weight class” when it comes to in-house training.  

 

I am proud to have been recognized as the right fit to become the law enforcement liaison to Marquette County Crime Stoppers. I have held this honorable position since 2014 and have been able to work with the citizen board in many ways. I wanted to learn more and bring in new innovations to our county, so I ran for election for the Wisconsin State Crime Stoppers (WSCS) board. I was elected to the WSCS board in 2020 and have attended the state conference annually to bring back updated ideas and technology to Marquette County. One of the innovations we implemented over the past few years was P3 Tips, an anonymous online reporting system to report crimes and suspicious activity. We also partnered with the Montello and Westfield School Districts to have Marquette County Crime Stopper – P3 rugs displayed in the sports lobby or high traffic entrances of the school to have reporting information to students and parents available daily.  

 

In early 2022, I was approached and asked if I would be interested in joining the board as the Vice-President of the Marquette County Firefighters Association (MCFA). I was taken by this request as I had never been a volunteer firefighter and wondered why MCFA wanted a law enforcement professional to be on their board. I accepted the nomination and I was elected to the MCFA board. I served two years as Vice-President and two years as President of MCFA. During my time with the board, we improved training and attendance at all quarterly meetings by members. One of my goals as outgoing President, was to work together as a team and create a committee to work towards a full-scale exercise with first responders. I am happy to see MCFA and Marquette County Emergency Management made this come to life in May 2026 with the large full-scale exercise at the fairgrounds.

 

In January 2026, I was given a letter of “Notable Service to Marquette County” for exceptional service as our fleet manager from County Administrator Ron Barger. In the letter I was recognized for being instrumental with our fleet and earned higher fiscal returns by selling county-owned vehicles. In closing, the letter said my efforts have increased the fleet reserve program funds beyond expectations, which will ensure many more years of the program sustainability.

 

Keeping up with updated technology is expensive in today’s world, especially law enforcement. We have technology in every division within our office. The technology contracts and open communication with vendors need to happen on a regular basis to ensure our resources are in the best-case scenario annually.