Welcome everybody to Midday Magazine for this July 3rd, 2024.
Have your host James J. Mailoff here.
In part one, for the whole half an hour here,
we're gonna be speaking with Lieutenant Scott Sager.
Scott is joining us to talk a little bit about his career
as he's wrapping things up.
We wanna thank our friends over at the Wood County
Sheriff's Department for doing that.
We also wanna thank our great friends
at Wisconsin Rapids Community Media being here.
Always appreciate Joe and the gang.
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Scott, thank you so much for being here.
Do you wanna spend the first five minutes
ripping on Sean?
Cause I, I mean, I feel like we can.
He's not here and he kinda stood us up a little bit
on everything, so no, we can't do that.
I, I don't even know what I'd come up with
to be honest with you, man.
But we do wanna send a shout out to Sean,
appreciate the time whenever he is able to join us.
Scott, thank you again for being here.
I wanna get into your career as you are retiring.
So when, when is your retirement exactly?
Yeah, I've got a retirement date of August 5th.
Okay, all right.
Coming up here in next four weeks.
Well, I, I got a bunch of questions,
but just off the top of my head, my first one,
how are you feeling about it?
Well, it was a, it was a tough decision to make.
It was a hard day of the day that I decided
that that was gonna be the date.
It's bittersweet.
This is all I've known all my life.
I'm serving the communities and the jurisdictions I work in.
You know, it sits deep with me.
It means a lot to me to help people out in their worst days.
But I'm ready for the next chapter in my life.
And I just have to be able to separate
and let that part go.
You know, it's, it's been all my life, my career.
And it's, it's something I've been proud of
and very much enjoy coming to work to every day for all the years.
And I think that says a lot for anybody that can enjoy,
you know, going to their job every day.
That, I love that phrase.
Yeah, you enjoy what you do.
You never work a day in your life.
You know, it's a great phrase.
Before we go too much further in the future here,
let's rewind a little bit.
Let's go back.
First off, what got you to want to be in this service?
What got you to want to do this for a career?
Well, it's back in the high school days.
I was a senior in high school.
I was halfway through my senior year.
I'm a local here, born or raised in Wisconsin Rapids.
I was at Lincoln High School halfway through
and didn't realize, didn't know for sure what I was going to do.
My father was a carpenter of trade.
And I was thinking about, you know,
getting in the carpentry and the trades.
And he was kind of trying to talk me out of that.
Trying to do something different.
But anyway, I talked to a couple of police officers
halfway through my career and just kind of piqued my interest.
And the more and more I started kind of digging into it
and learning more about it,
the more and more I just got more interested in.
That's, I think I found my niche of what I wanted to do.
So something sparked in you about it.
Yeah.
And it was not until halfway through high school senior year.
Was it one of those, cause I know this happened for me
when I was at Lincoln too.
We had times where they came in officers
that were currently enlisted,
they came in and talked to us as students
and everything and kind of told us about what it is
to be a police officer or a sheriff and some of that.
That I know that that even piqued my interest as a kid.
Did was something like that?
What helped get you started on this path?
No, it was more kind of an off duty type scenario.
Or you know, outside of the school.
Yeah, yeah.
And they didn't really have a lot of that when I was,
okay, nice school on that.
It's, I bring it up in part because I,
I imagine sometimes you don't know who you're impacting
doing those when you go to schools and everything.
I know it didn't mean.
I know I had a friend that it was really impacted by it
and really got them to, they had never thought about
being an officer before and it really got them to
and up thinking about doing that.
Just so you and your, the team knows, you know,
that stuff really does help.
It really does go a long ways when you're visiting schools,
when you're talking with kids.
I think it's a great point which you're bringing up too.
We, we talk all the time, Sheriff Becker and I
about building that bridge stronger and stronger
between community and law enforcement.
And when you stop and you, you, you, you, you know,
shoot a couple hoops with kids or you just stop and say hi
and it, it's nothing more than just one citizen
and another talking and everything.
That builds bridges, sure, but you also don't know
what spark could be started from something like that.
Where when you're driving away and a little kids like that
looks like a pretty cool job.
Like I might want to do something like that.
But we, we can have no shortage of that again,
something else that Sean and I talk about when he was first
going into this and enlisting and being, and wanted to be
in this job and the amount of people that were going for it
and the amount of people that now go for it.
We need more and more good people getting into these
services, getting into these jobs.
So anytime it's to start those sparks, sounds good.
Yeah, absolutely.
In fact, just this morning I was at a local business picking
up some product and there was a mother out there
with two young kids and I was just getting her
ready to get back in my squad and she asked if the kids
were interested, they're wanting to sit in the car.
And I'm like, yeah, we can definitely do that.
So open the door and show them a couple of things inside
and told them explain some of the basics,
you know, the radio and the radar and the computer system
and they wanted to see the backseat.
And our back seats have a plastic, kind of a plastic seat,
hard seat in the back.
And they said that that definitely didn't look comfortable.
I said, yeah, it's definitely a place that you,
definitely don't want to be in that if you don't have to.
But anyway, hopefully the last time you see the backseat,
but yeah, especially as kids, whatever gets them interested,
whatever kind of gets them to see, you know, hey,
this is, it's more than what you see on the outside.
I think that that's really, and also hopefully
creates some empathy in these kids, whether they go
into law service or not, the more information they know
about what it, like to be in that vehicle,
to be in that position, to be in that job,
hopefully the more and more empathy we create for that too
when it comes to our society and having more and more kids
growing up and seeing, oh, this is the line.
This is the line of defense we have as a community.
And they understand that a little bit more.
Yeah.
How long have you been in the position?
I've been an officer for 30 years.
And a few years before that, I had three years
on the Wood County Reserves, starting in 91, 92, and 93,
where I did the park patrol and kind of the more of a summertime
type of application, or especially events
that go through the year.
Jobs were tough to find back in the early 90s here.
If we had one position open at a police department
or sheriff's department, there was typically two to 300 applicants
that would be applying for one position.
So in some of those were previous officers
with prior experience versus the young guys just kind
of had the academy with zero experience.
So anything to get involved with, you know,
on the job type training, I got involved with the exhilaries.
Wisconsin ramp is police department on their exhilarie.
It's a volunteer situation there where you come in uniform,
but do special events and do some ride longs with officers.
But anything to build some history and, you know,
some free on job training experiences.
I was gonna ask this a little bit later,
but as long as we're talking about
kind of go right into, when it comes to people
that are out there listening that may want to look
into law enforcement as a career and find out more about it,
are those some of the things you would suggest
of kind of getting your feet in the water a little bit?
The ride along seems like a great idea.
Yeah, our department does ride along as if there are people
interested in, you know, thinking about making that a career path.
We're more than willing to accommodate schedules
and make something work out, even if it's for a few hours.
Some people request, you know,
they kind of ride into our 12 hour shift.
And usually on the first one, we'd recommend, you know,
three or four hours just to kind of get a taste of it.
And if they're interested, you know,
we can bring them back another time or two.
And then after that stage, typically, yeah,
we recommend the auxiliaries applying
for our Wood County Reserve program,
which is a great stepping stone into a full-time career.
We understand most of our part-time reserves
don't typically stick around for more than a couple of years
because it has a stage in their life.
And they move on to bigger and better
and not to a full-time career.
So when it comes to influences, you mentioned, you know,
there was something that sparked you from a young age
or when you were in high school about this.
As you get into the job, you get into the profession
where there are people that impacted it for you
that helped guide you in this job.
There were a couple of friends of my parents
that were officers in town here
for their rapids PD.
And I had a chance to have some conversations with them
after I was, you know, definitely getting my interest
sparked as far as making it a career.
And after speaking with them, you know,
they had given me the pros and cons
and kind of let me make a decision on what direction
I wanted to go, but yeah, and after that,
it just really seemed to start coming together,
getting on the auxiliaries then.
I got on right away, started getting experience
doing some volunteering and working on
especially events in the football games and parades
and things like that.
It just, before I knew it, I had a couple of auxiliaries
I got on the town of Rome, auxiliary in Adams County as well.
And it just one thing led to another
to part-time work, to full-time work.
Was there anything that was really a situation,
a conversation, anything like that
that was really impactful while you've been in the position,
while you've been doing this,
I cannot imagine the hard days that can come from a job
like this, things that help get you through
or help get you through those early, you know, tough days.
Yeah, basically, anytime that we can help someone,
especially on their bad days,
whether it's a medical issue
or whether it's an incident-related issue,
just being able to be there and provide a service to them
is the most rewarding part.
I've had a lot of medical calls over the years.
I've done a lot of CPR,
seen people at their worst time,
and tried to bring them back into the world,
not always the sunshine rainbows,
you know, making it all happen,
but people do expire as well.
But just knowing that you're there to help people
and move forward with making their day better.
Were there some moments, and hopefully there were a lot of them,
and this is a tough question for you, hopefully.
Were there some moments that really stood out to you
in your career, they're like, man,
I'm so thankful I have this job.
I'm so thankful to be in this position.
Certainly, I can think of there were moments
where you were doing things like you were just touching
on there and helping people or what have you.
Any events like, you know, I'm thinking of things like the,
no, the jump in the water.
No, I can't do that.
Polar plunge, thank you.
Gee, sure, Joe, I need to pull up, no.
But yes, Polar plunge events like that,
that were really fun to be a part of,
where there are things that stand out to you
in your career that you really enjoyed like that.
Yeah, things like that, anything with community involvement.
The Polar plunge was a great time
for everybody to get together.
People love to see the cops jump in and get cold and wet.
But we've done all kinds of community,
interacting with the cops on a rooftop
and coffee with a cop,
and all types of different things.
Touch a truck of bears, yeah, touch a truck.
And I've shown our armored vehicle numerous times
and have people, hundreds and hundreds of people
in and out of it.
And they ask, you know, a million questions,
which they should and they answer all their questions
for them and explain the reasons why.
We have something like that.
And after they have a conversation with you
and you enlighten them, they totally understand,
the reasons that that would be beneficial.
Yeah.
We're speaking with Lieutenant Scott Sager
from the Wood County Sheriff's Department.
Scott is going to be retiring in August.
We're having a conversation about his career
and talking about some of the different things
that he've experienced through it.
And one of the things that I was curious about Scott
is as much as time has I've spent with you guys
and I've learned more about this.
And being honest with the audience
and you guys, as you will know,
I know both sides of this job in some ways,
being a former knucklehead that I am and everything.
But one of the things that I always like to ask
is finding out different stuff
that we wouldn't know as citizens.
Things that you guys experience or do.
Things that stand out to you about the job
that might be insightful for others
that we wouldn't know from a TV show
or something like that.
But we can hear from you yourself.
Is there things that stand out to you
about the job and your career in doing the job
that you don't think your average person would know about?
Yeah, some of the, you know,
without getting into great details,
the calls that you get that you think
no one else would have probably ever want to go to
or a much less experience, you know,
the death scenes, the car crashes,
the fatal car crashes, you know, domestic incidents,
you know, where people are assaulted.
There's other things too that I was involved
with for the years.
I was on our investigation,
investigations department as a drug officer for four years.
They had a lot of things on there
that I never thought I'd ever be a part
of some pretty interesting, I guess, missions,
if you will, and working undercover.
I'm currently the commander for our special response team.
Been on our special response team now for all the 19 years
I've been at the Sheriff's Department
and definitely have, you know,
seen some different range of calls call outs
or warrant services that we have done.
And at times we have brought, I guess,
civilian members of our community along with us
on some of the calls that, you know,
I can keep them inside the armored vehicle
on a safe location, but just to be able to experience
that kind of stuff, because that is something
that not everyone sees on a regular basis.
And how you have to interact with people
and to, you know, be safe coming home at night
or in the morning, if it's a night time
and it versus daytime, but yeah,
just to kind of a total different approach.
Yeah, it's, we take so much from TV movies
and think that we have an insight
or we understand a little bit more of these jobs
and not just what you do, but certainly almost anything
that you see on entertainment and everything.
But it's one of the things that I like to bring up to people
especially when it comes to this topic
or even in recent years when it comes to law enforcement
is what you see on TV, it cannot be more scripted.
When an officer shows up, there is no script.
This is improv.
There is no, you're trained and certainly trained very well
for these, but you have no idea what that person's gonna say
or what's gonna happen or how their mood is
or their mindset or any of these things.
And oftentimes you're doing this
with people you've never met before.
So the importance of us having some empathy
and understanding of that.
I appreciate the things that you brought up as well
because part of the reason I wanted to talk about this
is I think a lot of people think,
well, a police officer or a sheriff's job is this,
this, this, and this.
And there is so much more put on your all plates
that weren't, when you first started this job,
it's important for us as a community
and not only know this, so that we certainly have
some appreciation for the work that's being done,
but also some understanding of,
I would hope some understanding of
what is being asked of our police officers,
what is being asked of our sheriff's department
and these things.
I don't think that enough people are understanding
of really the full accomplishment of all that that is
from especially for people like yourself
that have been doing this for 30 years
where you started and what's being asked of you now.
That's very different worlds.
And while we appreciate the work that you're doing,
I don't think it's asking a lot for our community
to have some empathy and understanding of it as well.
Sure, and we all have hats to wear.
As a police officer, we wear a lot of different hats
from daily, but it takes all of us in the community
to make the world go around.
People say, I definitely couldn't do your job.
And honestly, I could say probably the same thing
at certain jobs that other people have,
that everybody's kind of cut out for something
and that takes us all together to make it all happen.
That's a good way to put that.
Scott, as we're wrapping up here,
I did have just a couple of other questions for you.
When it comes to, I'm really hoping with this interview here
that not only you have, enjoy yourself,
you have a good time, we get some great content for us
and of course, we've got to ask you to meet you.
But one thing I did want to hope to do is encourage
and maybe get a spark in somebody.
And maybe somebody out there is listening
and it gives them an idea to want to do this
and go into law enforcement and everything.
What was some of the, if any, advice that you received
or that you would give to somebody that is looking
to get into this well field?
Probably the biggest message is just to be able
to treat people the way that you want to be treated.
That definitely goes a long ways in your career.
You know, I've met, seeing that I work and live
in the community that I work in,
live in the community that I work in.
You know, I see people on the streets at Walmart
or at a restaurant or wherever it may be.
Well, I'm off duty and it's somebody that I don't, you know,
maybe in the recent past or the distant past.
And they come up and say, thank you to me
of how you're really decent with me,
it treated me with respect.
And even though that at face value,
there might be some real stern instructions you give
somebody, but you still need to have that level of respect
and treat people with respect like a human being
just the way you would want to be treated.
So honestly, the biggest message for me
is just treat people the way you want to be treated
and that'll take you through your whole career.
Well said, speaking of things that you can do next
and everything, you want to look in the radio, man,
you're doing great, you're really good on the radio,
you've got a great voice, everything,
might be so to look into.
That is fantastic advice, appreciate that Scott.
And as for what's next for you, not to pry or, you know,
even ask, you know, ask you questions,
do you mean I know the answer student yet?
What are you looking forward to about next for you
after this?
Yeah, no problem.
So for the last nine to 10 years,
I've been the drone coordinator for our department
and it's the more and more I've gotten involved
with our drone program and fly in our drones
for, you know, search and rescue and tactical operations
and just different requests, some type of photography type stuff.
And I basically found a niche
and had a couple of people that helped me along
in the drone world there kind of point me in a direction
of getting into aerial crop dust, the spring,
like egg spring.
So with the heavyweight drones.
So this past year, I got all my certifications
and licensing and whatnot.
So I'm going to be doing a bunch of agricultural
spring with the heavyweight drones.
Man, that sounds awesome.
I've actually gotten into a little of that myself,
just in interest, I haven't done anything yet,
but I've watched a lot of videos and I've researched it
because it just seems like something to be really cool to do.
If you get a chance to you, anybody out there,
if you haven't seen our national parks,
every one of them have had some drone footage done
and it's just incredible, incredible what they can pick up
and what they can do with those things now.
And the detail, the four or five K, whatever they're up to now,
12 K, whatever it is, it just really does feel like you're there.
Like it's just amazing stuff
that they're able to do with those now.
That's going to be a fun gig, I imagine.
That's going to be very, to keep you busy,
give you something to enjoy the bull to do
and get a creative outlet there as well.
That should be a lot of fun.
Yeah.
There's definitely a few different jobs that can be done with them,
but not just the spirit drones, but also the camera,
thermal drones will help people that can't find their deer
in the fall with a thermal drone
and with deer recovery too.
So what they have done for missing people,
like that alone has made them such an asset
to law enforcement, to us as a community.
It really is interesting to see where the evolution of those
and how much we're finding different uses for them
and everything.
Yeah, I told Sheriff Becker if he ever needed
any type of search and rescue type stuff done with drone
just to phone call away and we'll definitely come in
and provide the service free of charge
to the community and give back.
Very cool and appreciative.
And also speaks completely to the service that you
and so many of your brothers and sisters have done
when it comes to this job
because one of the things that Sheriff Becker and I have also
talked about is how you guys retire, quote unquote,
retire, but you never really leave the gig.
Your heart is still there.
You've got friends and people and colleagues
that are still in law enforcement.
So you're still going to be paying attention,
still going to be certainly having your heart
in that world in many ways.
We know this also from so many people
who will not let go of a cold case
and so many officers out there that will keep working
on that case long into retirement.
I always like to shout out those individuals
and show our appreciation to them
because that you talk about above and beyond.
I don't know if you can come up with a better description
and above and beyond of the service
when you continue to even into retirement,
which so many of you guys do.
We greatly appreciate that.
As we let you go, Scott, I'm curious,
you step by, take a step back,
look at your career in a third person perspective.
Legacy is such a big word
and I don't think it has to mean as much as we think
it can mean and everything.
What do you kind of hope your impact,
your footprint on this job
and this community has been?
Oh boy.
Yeah, not a tough question
about the wrap-up on it.
Oh, is he one of these one to wrap-up?
I just another officer out there doing a job
providing service to the community.
As far as anything specific to our community
or our department,
probably the most passion that I've had there
is my involvement with the special response team.
I just really want to see that team continue to grow
and flourish and provide a service to the community,
help keep our community members safe
when the call comes in that
our regular patrol officers are needing extra help
for tactical missions or operations
to be able to execute those as safely as possible
and still working with community,
neighboring jurisdictions,
whether it's with Marshall PD,
we wrap it's PD,
you're Portage County,
Pullover PD,
neighboring counties,
Marathon County,
with so many neighboring jurisdictions
to get to the same end result
to resolve a situation peacefully.
Scott, I can't thank you enough for the time
putting up with my questions,
hanging out with us and everything.
But most importantly,
I want to thank you for your service
and everything you've done for this community.
We really deeply appreciate you, sir.
And thank you for the time.
Give Sean a hard time for me, will you?
Yeah, we'll do it.
Thank you, James.
I appreciate the time.
Good to see you.
Enjoy your retirement.
I hope you enjoyed it.
And thank you again for the time.
All right, appreciate it.
Big, thank you to Joe and our friends over
on Scott's Rapids Community Media
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