 Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you. My name is Adam Payne, co-host of this program with chairman Bill Gehring and today we're very pleased that our guest is Mike Helpeke, the sheriff in Sheboygan County. Mike's been tremendously busy of late and he's going to share with you some of the roles and responsibilities of the sheriff's department as well as talk a little bit about the PGA and what was a highly successful week in great part because of Sheriff Helpeke and the work that he did, his staff and obviously the state and other levels of government. So Mike, welcome and it's good to have you with us today. I know you've been very busy. Thank you. Why don't you start by sharing with our viewers a little bit about yourself and your law enforcement career? I know you've been with Sheboygan County for some time. Yes, I am a lifelong resident of Sheboygan County, born and raised in the county. I'm 48 years old. I am married and have two adult children. Professionally, I have been with the department just about 27 years. I started my career as a deputy working in corrections where I worked in the jail for about three years then I transferred to the road. After that I was promoted to sergeant, eventually to lieutenant and then I took shift commander's responsibilities over in the mid-1990s, ran for sheriff, was elected sheriff in November of 2002 and took office January of 2003. During the course of my career I was involved in many different units and special teams in the department including the SWAT team, our tactical team. I was a field training officer, an officer in charge of high-risk incidences and an internal affairs investigator. So it's going to be two years as sheriff this January and as you just shared you bring a wealth of knowledge and expertise to the position. In these two years, which I imagine have flown by pretty quickly, what have been some of the key challenges that you've had? Yes, they have flown by quickly. I can't believe that I'm almost midterm already and that running for sheriff maybe right around a corner again. Obviously challenges for not only our department but all government departments is with shrinking and tight budgets being able to provide the same level of services that we currently provide. Many of our programs are funded through state and federal funds and there's talk that if those are reduced any further that could have an impact on our ability to provide those programs as well. So the budget coupled with the increasing cost of doing business in terms of health insurance and employee benefits and just cost of doing business, gasoline, price of equipment, automobiles, radios and all of those things that we need to do our job continues to increase at the same time budgets become tighter. So that I see as a huge challenge. So being able to become more effective and efficient. I'm continually tapping my staff for recommendations and suggestions and how we can do that. And so far you've certainly done an admirable job. I'm glad you raised this because our next month our guest is going to be Tim Finch the finance director and certainly as you and Chairman Gehring know we're in the midst of our budget process and not only for the sheriff's department but all 23 departments. It's a real challenge to continue to provide the same level of service or improve with finite resources. So certainly that's been a challenge for you. You've also made some changes while you've been here the last couple of years. Some reorganization, what have you? You want to talk briefly about some of the accomplishments? Sure. Last year we cut about a half a million dollars from our budget. The year before that, the year that I took office, the reductions that I inherited from the previous administration was about $420,000. So we're looking at about a million dollars since I've been sitting in the sheriff's seat that we've reduced from our budget. And I'm happy to say we were able to do that without reducing services, without laying off employees. And some of the ways that we've been able to accomplish that is by doing some reorganization of our staff within the department. I campaigned on looking at reorganizing the department from the top all the way down and put those resources where they were most needed. And I'm happy to say that we've done some of that. We've cut three corporals positions and added a couple of deputies positions. I'm currently working on a reorganization proposal. It'll come before the county board tonight, as a matter of fact, to eliminate one of the director's positions and spread some of that out in other areas where we as an administrative staff saw a need. Clearly some difficult decisions to make, but as you said with a reduction of almost a million dollars in financing, you've been able to meet the challenge of hitting those targets and help Chairman Gehring and the rest of the county board keep tax rate increases at a minimum. Why don't we step back just for a second? Because we probably assume most people, when they hear sheriff's department, they know what that readily means, but you have a number of areas of responsibility within the department. What's the primary roles and responsibilities of the sheriff's department? Well, the sheriffs in the state of Wisconsin and probably like many other states have constitutional responsibilities that are basically defined in constitution going way back to early times of when our state was formed. And some of those constitutional responsibilities of a sheriff and a sheriff's department that differ from municipal police departments are that the sheriff has to provide for inmates and people that are incarcerated from every agency within the county. So therefore we are the keeper of the county jail. A huge part of our responsibility, a huge part of our operations and a huge part of our budget is devoted to corrections. Another area is that constitutionally we are required to provide a civil process division. Now these are deputies that go out and serve all types of civil process papers from evictions to divorce decrees to any type of court summons. We have four deputies that work full time in serving civil process. Another constitutional responsibility of the sheriff is to provide for courtroom and courthouse security. We do that in the form of the bailoffs that we have assigned to one of each to one of the five circuit courts that we have in Sheboygan County. The sheriff is also required to regulate the storage and transportation of explosives within their jurisdiction to provide water recovery and rescue team and obviously to provide law enforcement services to the other areas of the county that may not have their own municipal police department. And I know you just scratched the surface so again those divisions, corrections, civil process, criminal investigations, patrol, a little later we're going to talk about your emergency management responsibilities in that position. How many employees does the department have and what's your what's your budget? We have approximately 180 employees at any given time, take or plus or minus a few. We have just under a 12 million dollar budget and we we accomplish as you said through different divisions and different work units within the department. So a tremendous amount of responsibility, a lot of areas that many of our viewers may have not heard of before and some people may even forget we have responsibilities with corrections and the jail and the detention center and then the PGA hits the town and with that I'll turn it over to Bill Gehring. Okay we have just come off of the PGA week and I'm sure that your department contributed to it really being a success but I'm sure it also put a burden on your department. Can you talk sheriff about when you started planning and what the planning entailed for this event? Yes we actually started planning for this over two years ago. The PGA brought a tournament director into the community about two years ago and his responsibility was basically hurting together all of these resources that would be needed in the various areas to pull off a tournament like that. Everything from the areas that my department was involved in traffic security, emergency management and things like that all the way to parking, transportation, security, hospitality, food stands and everything like that so that individual coming in with that knowledge basically split all of these jobs up into different working committees and we fell into that committee that dealt with traffic, security and emergency medical services and those types of things so it was called the spec committee that's an acronym and I don't remember exactly what it all stands for so we provided people that were involved in that committee to implement the plans that we ultimately developed and put into place for the tournament. How was the planning different than the planning you would do for road america or the shabuigan county fair obviously much smaller activities but still activities within the county? Yeah the road america and shabuigan county fair were basically there was not this cooperative effort of all of these different agencies we kind of just planned it within our own department to deal with the traffic and security at these events and you know went with our plan plans that we've been you know utilizing for many many years as long as I've been on the department we've been doing road america and road america I think is just celebrated its 50th anniversary recently so it's been around a long time. Shabuigan county fair is another huge spectator event that shabuigan county hosts one of the largest state one of the largest county fairs in the state in terms of attendance and we've we work closely with the plumber's police department in providing for security traffic measures for that but this this really differed in the way that I think this was very unique in that there was this relationship between the cooler company who brought their resources into the equation the the county the pga the federal government all working together to basically accomplish a common goal and in in terms of coordinating and having resources available to me or to my department this was clearly different than road america and the county fair. Okay I was out there for a media event on thursday and it really seemed to be a nicely behaved crowd I understand that there were no arrests is that true and also what was your major challenge? There there were no arrests um our our responsibility um for the conduct of people at the tournament itself was to basically supplement the security company that the pga had hired unless of course our officers witnessed a crime being committed in their presence so there were no arrests made there were a couple of people that were ejected during the course of the week but very few that I'd heard about very few issues as far as rowdy behavior or disorderly conduct in fact I hadn't heard of any real significant issues so it was a was a very well-behaved crowd. Okay earlier this year your department hired a new emergency management coordinator did that person have a role in planning for the pga and if so what might have been? Yes he did his his name is Steve Steinert um his uh his roles his role in the pga was significant um he was there to um plan for plan and be part of our um disaster planning um say if there were a need to evacuate the people from the grounds for whatever reason it could be because of weather or um of uh uh something that had occurred on the course that would require evacuation he was there for that planning he worked closely with the federal and state agencies the FBI ATF and the Coast Guard as well as the medical staff that was contracted by the pga to provide medical services at the tournament so he was kind of our coordinator or our liaison to all of those different entities. Okay also well after I saw a fair amount of state patrol cars I know that the state did help pay for overtime incurred by county officers can you talk about how the state and county work together and was this really a good working relationship and maybe we can say to the viewers that yes the county and state can work together um I I can definitely say that we work very well together uh you know up until really uh probably about eight months ago we as a department didn't um anticipate the um the buy-in that the state provided to us for our responsibilities or towards our responsibilities so it was we were very happy to find out that the state was going to provide all of these resources um additional troopers um the uh the the the money to pay for our overtime expenses and things like that were totally unanticipated at at the beginning of this planning so in terms of of them bringing those resources and as far as our officers working together to get the job done that relationship went very very well okay while I was out there also I didn't happen to talk with the governor twice and he was very complimentary about Sheboygan county and how they handled the PGA so I'm sure that your department greatly contributed to this so I thank you Adam I thank you Sheriff I thank you too um I I also talked to the governor a couple of times out there and um he was very pleased as well as a secretary of the department of transportation um had been out there and I heard nothing but good things um not only you know from the job that we did but really the overall effort by by everybody to just make the experience um a phenomenal experience for the spectators that were in attendance great many people I'm sure aren't aware of this certainly our viewers but just to let you know Sheriff Helmke when this was all being planned obviously he mentioned earlier the challenges with budget and we were looking at close to a hundred thousand dollars of overtime for this event and Sheriff Helmke to his credit said all right state of Wisconsin we need you to step up and be part of this and to work with us and I can't credit you enough and credit your department enough for just a tremendous job not only was he successful in garnering the dollars from the state to cover all of our overtime at least that's my understanding um the traffic flow was just excellent I don't care what time of the day it was Mike and his staff did just a tremendous job moving traffic along the only constructive criticism or or negative feedback that I've heard is that some of our local merchants would have liked to see more of those people come into Sheboygan to to shop at their stores would have you but other than that from top to bottom it's been nothing but positive and you certainly deliver it on your part and it's good to hear that the state and the county work so well together on this it it's just all of us went into it with expectations and I think they were exceeded in most areas so well done thank you so moving on from the PGA and you probably haven't had a lot of sleep the last week and I know many of your officers were working overtime 30 40 plus hours a week it's back to the budget it's back to more of the roles and responsibilities that you generally deal with there's been a lot of discussion of late with the city and the the building of a new police department and as I'm sure many of our viewers are aware there were negotiations between the city and the county and and we're not going to get into that today but one of the key things that's been discussed is how much is the city and county really working together there are always opportunities for improvement but sometimes I think people don't appreciate just how much is currently going on could you give our viewers an example of some of the areas where the city police department and the sheriff's department is working together yeah probably very little credit to me but we've had a great working relationship with the Sheboygan police department as well as all of the other municipal law enforcement agencies in in Sheboygan county for years I just I see my role as to facilitate and to enhance that cooperative relationship that we've really had with these agencies for a long time we share communications I know since we've built the 800 megahertz radio system a number of years ago we have commonality there and in frequencies and repair technicians and in resources to draw into our communications we share records records management system with the Sheboygan police department as well as the village of Kohler the city of falls Sheboygan falls in the city of Plumeth we we have a combined dive team with the city police department we have our MEG unit or our drug unit that is a cooperative effort of as well actually staffed by both city police officers and and sheriff's deputies but with support from the other law enforcement agencies in the county we we share our range at at at our facility with all of the law enforcement agencies in the county we do training in our interdepartmental training with each other we have access to the the city of Sheboygan's canine unit if we're in need of canine services we share our accident reconstructionist team with the city if they would need our services and equipment we share back and forth a good example was just last week with the PGA we needed more radios and shoulder mics and things like that the city had that equipment available and we were able to borrow it from from them for a week so there are a lot of things that are that that have been going on for a long time I see one of my major responsibilities is to continue to look at other ways we can share and other things that we can do together to ultimately reduce that duplication of services and and to be able to provide the the equipment and the items that we need for the community well you hit on earlier that with budget constraints at all levels of government and certainly with the sheriff's department and the other com departments in the county any opportunities we have to work together or share resources obviously is in the taxpayers best interest as you touched on there's a number of areas that resources are being shared to the benefit of the community but as you look forward what do you see us perhaps some opportunities whether it's the city of Sheboygan or any of the other police departments in the county well training is is always an area because of mandates that are placed on on law enforcement officers to maintain certification our areas where I think we could do and continue to do more training together training space is is always an issue an updated training facilities such as a range and an area where we can do technical training physical training and things like that is is always an area that's you either don't have it or in in our case our facility is 25 years old and it's now time to update some of these things so with the city looking at building a new police department I'm hoping that we can build the infrastructure that will accommodate those those needs in the future because our stuff is getting a little worn and outdated and and tattered and and here's an opportunity now they're going to build that we could we could certainly share an ad area and there's just a whole host of different things that could be done we've talked about possibly a joint communication system of of some sort you know eventually pie in the sky we could maybe combine our mechanical area our maintenance people our clerical people but physically when you have separation it makes it difficult to do those types of things so we're always open to that and we have a real great relationship we're talking you know obviously we had this unfortunate situation with one of our officers we have a funeral coming up on Friday and the the police department as well as the other agencies in the county says hey Mike anything you need from us when this is going on let us know so you know we may be in need of some you know employees to cover for our employees when the funeral goes on so those are the types of things that that are you know that you have just based on the relationship that you have with these people and we continue to do those things sometimes very behind the scenes but we're all in here to do one thing and one thing only and that is perfect to provide a service to the community you mentioned the firing range that we've been sharing with all the other municipalities for some time we know that that's starting to get older and that's an opportunity for the future evidence storage is always a pressing need and it's just good and refreshing to hear you say that you're focusing on seeking additional opportunities because as you said from budget standpoint we've got to be doing that and I wanted to take a moment at the end but you just touched on it as well as the PGA went and all the effort that made it successful on the last evening you lost an officer to honor him why don't you talk a little bit about the lieutenant that passed away yeah lieutenantly right now just a class guy a 29 year veteran of the sheriff's department looking to retire at the end of the year just an unfortunate situation had worked all week out at the PGA as our officer in charge of our security on the grounds had just finished his shift out there had gone back to the department to change and was on his way home from work to plumbeth when he was struck from behind on his motorcycle and tragically killed just an unfortunate set of circumstances my heart goes out to his family and his relatives and his friends and we as a department have lost a family member as well and we're we're doing everything we can to cope with that Lee Roy was a was a lieutenant in charge of our criminal investigations division an outstanding guy very involved in the department and over the course of his career and he'll be sorely missed yeah yeah well kind words nice of you to share with the viewers I know so many of our viewers may not see this this tape until after the funeral which is going to be this week but certainly our heart goes out to their their friends and family members involved with this sheriff the last couple of minutes that we have remaining mentioned some of the key challenges that you have what have you but what about key challenges in regards to law enforcement what do you see happening in this community that concerns you and you feel are going to be challenges in the years ahead well you know we we need to stay proactive and we need to stay on top of crime trends and to try to offer and be proactive in offering maybe services that will reduce those types of crimes drugs gangs drive-by shootings all of these things that we hadn't heard about maybe five or ten years ago are now happening in our community on disturbingly so a more regular basis I think as as as law enforcement professionals we need to stay attuned to what what is going on what can we do to possibly intervene and reduce or eliminate some of these things and that that's another aspect of I guess of strategic planning long range planning that we keep on top of those things so I really press my staff to to be you know to stay stay up on what the trends are what we can expect and and some of the things that maybe we can do to to eliminate or reduce that type of crime coming into our community technology computer internet crimes fraud sexual things that are going on via the internet are is another just you know kind of new venture to criminal investigations and law enforcement and that actually we have an officer a detective that has been trained in computer and internet crimes so we're looking into that in fact we have a couple investigations going on as we speak so you know things like that technology from a more from a delivery of services aspect we're looking at wireless 911 so that needs to be that needs to be addressed so those are some of the things that are happening some of the things we're being confronted with and some of the things I look forward to working with well thank you so much sheriff help you for joining us today we really appreciate the time you've taken I know it's been a challenging time and certainly thank you for all your hard work and especially your staff and everyone else who have been involved with making good things happen in the community on behalf of chairman bill gearing and myself adam pain thank you for joining us today and until next month we wish you well and if you have any suggestions for future programs give us a call next month tim finch our finance director we'll be here to talk about the challenges of the budget process so until then thank you