Welcome everybody to Midday magazine for this Wednesday, November 6th, 2024.
Have your host, James J. Mailov here, want to welcome our good friends from Wisconsin
Rapids Community Theatre.
Wisconsin Rapids Community Media in with us, I got theater on the braid, I'm sorry guys.
We appreciate our friends at Wisconsin Rapids Community Media being here.
Do yourself a favor, go to YouTube, type in your search bar, Wisconsin Rapids Community
Media, subscribe to their page and keep up to the great work that they are doing.
They are here every week pretty much, recording our episodes for us.
We greatly appreciate that and the mutual self promotion there and especially at times
like this, where we could spend the entire hour with Wood County Sheriff's Department
to do this once a month.
We always appreciate the time having Sheriff Sean Becker in with us.
Sean, how you been?
Doing great.
Doing well, getting over a cold, but always appreciate being here.
This is one of those days too, where everybody kind of feels, I feel like we all give each
other a little bit of grace, like everybody's tired today.
Everybody's tired.
I think that's something to keep in mind, not just going forward and everything, but
this week I would say, everybody give each other some grace right now because there's
a lot going on.
There's a lot.
I do want to start with the election.
With everything, I happened to have a connection with our local poll workers and by that
I mean my oldest daughter is a poll worker and seven months pregnant by the way, doing
it yesterday.
Oh, yes.
Yeah, yeah.
I tried to talk around, I'll be completely honest with you all, I did.
I've been overparadoid for the first time, Grandpa, so I was a little worried about him.
I was really proud of her out there.
In all seriousness, I did feel comfortable her being out there because of not only what
we've seen in reporting throughout the country, but I think what we know of our locals and
what we know of our area, I did not see anything from your end of things that did things
seem smooth to you.
Yeah, very.
Trent Miner does a fantastic job, just an outstanding job overseeing our elections here in Wood
County, just making sure that they're done safely communicating with us.
That's one thing with having security in front of the courthouse, that's where our offices
with Brian Peterson and the rest of our security staff that is right next to Trent's office
and just having that contact even through the last probably year, just making sure that
information is being shared, joint training with your clerks, along with law enforcement,
what do you think we need to have here in Wood County?
It went very well, and like I said, Trent does an absolute outstanding job with our elections
and getting the information out there, looking at the polls as they come in, you're seeing
results rather quickly, and that's a collaborative effort that is going on, not having just one
individual clerk overseeing everything, but all the clerks, you know, through Wisconsin
Rapids, Marshall Pitzel, Grand Rapids, everybody working together to get the information out
there.
I know throughout the country, you know, there are some certain areas that they felt
that they need a law enforcement present at polls that was not the case here in Wood
County, and I don't think really much, you know, in Wisconsin, obviously in, you know,
the bigger cities, you know, Milwaukee and Madison had more of a presence of law enforcement
and more big plans, but here it was just came down to communication, you know, there's
concerns, let us know, and there wasn't.
So thank you to your daughter for volunteering her time and to all the poll workers that
did that, you know, it was a contentious election that I think we're all probably, no
matter what side you're on, just reading a sigh of kind of relief and moving forward,
you know, it's really, I'm glad the ads are done.
I think a lot of people are feeling that way, and as a law enforcement perspective, being
a battleground state, and as contentious it was, you know, we had provided staff on another
law enforcement agency reached out, no matter who the candidate was, if they reached
out and we had the personnel, we sent them, you know, you look at what happened in Pennsylvania
and Wisconsin did not want to be any part of a situation like that ever.
And you know, we took that approach, no matter what Sheriff's Department requested help,
if they did for our agency, we did our best in providing them assistance.
So, and that was quite a bit, you know, you know, Marathon kind of reached out quite
a bit just because, you know, Lassa, you know, for central Wisconsin seemed to be the hub
of where, you know, candidates were going.
We have a field force team that is really basically there to work as a crowd control team,
and that team's combined with many central Wisconsin law enforcement agencies and the
one that oversees it is Marathon County.
So, we provide, I believe we have five deputies that are part of that team.
So, deployments, it really depends on what the situation is, but when candidates were
coming to Lassa, that was usually the first request that came out there.
The other one was, you know, the Sheriff's Department, we talked about their Kenan unit
and having a dog that, you know, detects explosives.
You know, we got quite a few asked for, for Bingo and his handler Lieutenant,
Brandon Cresciensen to, you know, make sure that, you know, events were being swept,
you know, throughout the state.
So, yeah, moving forward now, you know, we don't have to quite worry about personnel being,
you know, pushed towards these types of events.
So, yeah, it's a deep breath in moving forward, I know there's people that are happy,
and there's people that are disappointed, but I guess the main thing to moving forward
is we ought to work together with the results are.
Yeah, and one thing that I think is important to note where, with any of this,
is that democracy continued, and that should be the overall goal for a lot of us with this,
is keeping that alive.
It's very easy to support democracy when things are going your way.
It is a whole different thing to do it when you're in a situation where you're side,
I hate the terms of winning and losing with an election, but when your side doesn't win,
this is where you've got to grow up, and we've got to handle this as adults and work together.
It's something that we either going to do or not one way or the other.
Well, one thing we can take is for him yesterday, and yesterday went pretty smoothly.
I had some incidents in Madison that didn't turn into much, but we're sought out and squashed
right away. I think that the attention to these things is something that we can all take some
positives from. And I think that's important right now, where you've got, like you said,
you've got some people, well, we know how this works. Half the country is disappointed right now,
half the country isn't, but all of us got to live together, all of us got to make this world work.
And it's not worthy to say a second what you said, a big thinker to these poll workers to our
clerks out there, to so many people counting these votes, and to like two in the morning and
everything. And certainly to our law enforcement that had to be at sites and did the things that
they did. We greatly appreciate it. We'll talk more about this on the next election cycle,
which is tomorrow. No, it feels like it, but we got a little while here. We got a little while.
Sean, I know that you usually come in with a lot of notes and number of things you want to touch
on. Where do you want to start? Tim Bassett, a great friend of mine, was awarded a Jefferson award
from Channel 9. Listen Langben met with him last week and interviewed him. I put him in for
the Jefferson award that Channel 9 does, and it was very appropriate for Tim to be nominated.
What Tim has been doing, and Tim comes from many, many years of volunteering to the community.
He's a big part of our rescue unit that we've talked about before on the show, but he always
looked to see what he can do to give back to the community. And what he has been doing recently
is the Reggie Foundation and Annago were birds that are injured throughout the state go there,
and then they try to essentially save them, get them recouped, and then release them back into
the wild where they keep them alive and they stay there. And Tim took a strong liking to Reggie,
and the last several years he's been transporting birds to Annago all through the night,
through the day. Our dispatchers have his number, if we have a situation where
a bird is injured, they'll call him, and he'll take his own vehicle, pay for his own gas,
and go to Annago and drop off the birds at Reggie, and throughout the years talking to him about it.
I wanted to go on a trip with him, and unfortunately it hasn't happened, and he's done a few bald
eagles, and I think gosh, having the opportunity where he saves a bald eagle and be there, and he has
numerous times, just be kind of symbolic, but it's really not fair in a way, because I could do it
with any trip that he does, because it's not exclusive to bald eagles. Anything at all could be
anything, and a lot of our situations where a bird gets hit by a car and survives by his injured.
Like I said, he's done this countless times, and I just felt with the opportunity that
the Channel 9 does the Jefferson Awards, and shout out to Mark Sparock and Sparck Trucking,
because they're a huge supporter of this program. I thought Tim's deserving of it. I wasn't
me giving it to him. He's like, here's the information. Consider it. I strongly believe he deserves it,
and they came through, and that'll air on Channel 9 tomorrow night at, I think, 6 and 10.
So congrats to Tim. You deserve it, my friend, and enjoy the recognition, and he's very humble
about it. He told me that you've been talking to Melissa. It was like his Super Bowl of life,
because here you're getting recognized for somebody who's been doing for all his life,
and those are the people that you really like to highlight and enjoy having in our community.
They do a really good job at the Jefferson Awards. I really look forward to those segments
every year when they do them, and shout out to Melissa Langband, by the way. It's been
keeping this community informed for decades. It's so good at what she does, and just as nice
off-air, she is on air, everybody. Just the same thing as you get on air off-air, and that they do
that. Tim does is one of those gray areas in our society. We don't get to cover very often.
I would love to have him on the show sometimes. I'd really love that. If we make you,
having me a scheduler, well, that's one more time. We'll just add that to your task.
Generally, we'd love to talk to him about that. That's the kind of work that we ask of our,
I don't know if we ask of our community, but we look for people to step up in our communities,
to do these things that we don't necessarily have a tailored job for, or a title for,
or something. A big tip of the hat to him for that. That's really cool and really unique,
and wonderful to hear him getting noted for this, and good on you for recommending his name.
That's great. He deserved it. Definitely deserved it. A couple of other things,
Mitsy Ford, our office manager, happy Bladed Birthday. Yesterday it was her birthday, so
I won't say I'll hold because I know that gets us in trouble when we don't do that. Definitely.
But no, I appreciate her being part of the team. The Calder Raffle for a special response team
wrapped up on the 31st, and that went well. Appreciate all of the sponsors. Everybody that bought
the Calder's was a profitable year, and we always talk about equipment needs, and unfortunately
there's a pretty significant cost to those. I really appreciate the support for a special
response team. It was kind of a fun segment that we were doing on our Facebook page,
we were doing that live every morning, and I was wearing different hats when I got the
opportunity to read the whoever won off the tickets, and they all started from Mike Weiberk.
Last year I had whatever grab the ticket out of the bucket or whatever the thing that they're in,
and he said, you know, all the top you're had, you can see that you're ballading. I'm like, oh,
really? That's uncalled for. Yeah, I think I know. Like it was shocking, you wait, but what?
Yeah, I'm getting gray, and I'm losing hair. Yeah, okay, you know, look at my family. I know,
I know my family, right? No, okay. So I just said, I'll take that and make a joke on me,
and bring different hats in, you know, and make sure it's not my head's warm. Well, I kind of
spun off into, you know, just because I have a ton of hats, and then people are bringing me hats
that you're like, hey, how about this one? And then it kind of worked up pretty cool that
a couple of our sponsors, you know, hey, wear this hat and, you know, bring it on and
or wear it and make some comments. So it was pretty fun. So I'm looking forward to, you know,
if we do that again next year, we'll definitely go down that path, but again, appreciate everybody
that, you know, sponsored it, and especially the community that that came out there and bought
counter, you know, tickets. Had some really good sales throughout the entire county.
Our SRT team is combined with Marshfield, so it was nice to, you know, not just sell them,
you know, in the Southwood County area, but, you know, getting up into the Marshfield area,
and especially one of the football games in Rapids played. Marshfield and they had their own
back to Badge game. I think I talked about that before, but I think we sold like 30 calendars
that just from the people in the crowd, so I really appreciate it. When it comes to the proceeds
from that, how is that going to benefit the Sheriff's Department? How can that help the Sheriff's
Department? No, the team looks at, okay, what are the priorities? You know, what are the equipment
needs and, you know, what are the wants and what are the needs? All right, and then we go through
that list. All right, what can we budget for, you know, within our budget to get, you know,
whatever it might be, whether it's probably the biggest thing that we've been looking at are
radios and headsets, communications, and ballistic helmets. There's a shelf life for the helmets,
along with, on the vest, the heavy vest. So, all those things that I feel that the department
should be paying for are the support from those because, you know, that's part of, you know,
having a special response team, but there are other things out there, a drone, you know, drones
are, have proven to, obviously, locally, with the situation that we had, save lives, you know,
and there's different drones, you know, there's ones that can be just outside, you know,
filming everything and a lot of other options, but there's also other ones that you can get inside
of residence or building that's much smaller and you can navigate it. So, that's a big thing
that we're looking at, ballistic shields, you know, things like that. So, we're going to that through
what are the needs and what are the wants and then we'll fall with a purchasing some of that
equipment, but to highlight, it's always nice to be out in the community and it's humbling
to see the support. And when it comes to that part of it, I'm glad you brought that up. I want
to piggyback off of that because, you know, these videos you mentioned on Facebook live and stuff
there, it's fun. I love being, imagining you guys having a light moment in your day when there's
very few of those. So, I don't know many people that could squash on that, but the other extension of
this that we talk about often about building that bridge between our law enforcement and our communities.
We talk about this a lot and we talk about different ways of doing that and engaging and this
is certainly one of them. I don't know if we ever really get to ask a follow-up to that of,
are you seeing engagement with that? Are you seeing some of the positives come from that? I know
that I have and I know that I've talked to other officers that have, I'm curious for you, for your
staff, are you guys feeling some of the positive feedback? Some of that meeting you halfway kind of
thing and building that bridge and getting that bridge getting stronger? Yeah, with the community
support, we've talked about it for years, not only with our special response team, but
officer wellness, which is fairly new. We've talked about that. How important that is,
how mental health is in our community, but also the mental health for our first responders
in law enforcement. You look at the bench press meet that we did out at Anchor Bay and how successful
that was and it's different. It's not the typical thing. What is the typical fundraiser you see
on the community with the law enforcement agency? It's probably something new with the K9 unit
because I think people like our dogs more than us sometimes, but that's also a great way to get
out on the community and see those partnerships, but doing things that are different that are raising
money for initiatives that help fund things we normally can't. That's pretty humbling. Between
the officer wellness, the K9 unit, they brought up, which is doing very well, not just ours,
but I know other communities are as well. Scott's Rapp is police department. Just got a grant for
around $15,000 for a new dog. We'll talk about how that kind of happened as Wauksa does touch
our department as well. But then the special response team, and that was an idea that we had
many years ago when we were looking at fundraising for upgrading rifles. How do you look at that?
Again, some things you have to budget for, but some things are, can we go to the community for
and ask for funding, and we got a lot of support for that. Several years ago, the idea was doing a
5K. With mid-state technical college, continuing to be that strong partner, we ran a 5K out there
a couple times and did very well and were able to get the funding for necessary for that kind of
equipment. We're seeing it go outside of K9 stuff is really cool to see that the community
is supporting us financially when times can be tough with budgets. Something recently just came
into Segway and Lawn Roberts had called me on Monday, and that's the
son of Elner Roberts, and that was a cold case homicide that finally was prosecuted by the AG's
office and a jury found John Silver guilty of that horrific act. The sad thing is that the
family waited so many years to see justice finally served, and the AG's office did a phenomenal job,
and so that the staff that continued to work that case throughout the years, and the two primary
people that worked that case were Dave Laudy and Bob Levin, Usknav brought them up numerous times
in the show, because they mean a lot to me. There are two mentors that I've kind of looked at as I
went on through my career. I want to be like them. That's kind of the people that I learned the
most from in my career. But anyway, Lawn called me. He just said, I'm looking at humanitarian
to department. I'm like, okay, it's not a lot, but I want to do something in my mother's name,
because it's going to be the 40th anniversary coming up here at the end of the month. I'm like,
all right, but I really, you know, and what he said, and the message, and I'll say it forever,
is, you know, not only with the current department, but, you know, what Dave Laudy and Bob Levin
Dusky did for this investigation and never gave up and continued to move forward, and even when
they retired, they came back. They still were involved in the investigation, answering questions
when we were getting assistance, you know, from the state, from DCI and our current investigators
working on the case. You know, they're there. They never turned their back on it. It meant something
to them. And here, you know, Elner saw, you know, bring that up and bring them up specifically,
was very humbling. And then to give a donation to the department and basically telling me,
for whatever you want to do it for, I'm like, well, wait a minute. If this is going to be in,
you know, something in your mother's name, who suffered a terrible tragedy along with the
Robert's family, it's got to mean something to the department. And it said that, you know,
I'm going to kind of defer this on what we're going to do with this donation and see what Bob
and Dave think. And, you know, I called them both yesterday and said, hey, here's what we're at,
you know, and then I think the Robert's family wanted to do something more too with mid-state
technical college on potentially a scholarship offer to me that's going to be separate from
our department, but something, you know, to provide some scholarships for people wanting to
get into law enforcement. But this is just something to give the department. And I'm like, take
some time think about it because, you know, you want something, you know, that the department has
that we could say, you know, for a long time, well, after my time, this is to honor, you know,
the Robert's family to honor Elnor and honor the hard work that not just some of our staff did,
but what Dave and Bob did. That's where, you know, I threw it on their shoulders and was like,
all right, you tell me what you think we should, we should put this towards, you know, definitely
will have something on display at the Sheriff's Department, which is really good timing with,
you know, the facility getting closer and closer being done and will have a display case that will
definitely have, you know, something for Elnor in it. But what else do you want to do? And we kind
of, you know, brainstormed a little bit on, you know, what would be the best fit to continue to honor
her through, you know, as long as we can remember. I appreciate you sharing that. I appreciate hearing
that. And I'm looking forward to seeing you more about that. That's fantastic. So thank you for that.
We'll take a quick time out. We'll come back and have more conversation with Sheriff Sean Becker
and our friends from Wisconsin Revit's Community Media here at Menday Magazine on WFHR.
