 Welcome to Sheboygan County Government, working for you. My name is Adam Payne, County Administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Tom Wagner. And as you know, every month we strive to focus on a different department, generally have a different department head to share their roles and responsibilities. And today I'm very pleased that our District Attorney, Joe DeCeclos with us. Welcome, Joe. Thank you, Adam. Thank you, Tom. Pleasure to be here. It's good to have you here. We were just talking a little bit prior to the program. It's been, I think, since 2010 since Joe's been on the program, and it's not a reflection of our feelings about Joe. Frankly, he is one of the busiest department heads working for Sheboygan County. He's been with the county now for 27 years. September 5th, 1989 was my first day as a prosecutor in Sheboygan County. And it's been how many years as the elected? I took office as a District Attorney in 2003, January 2003. So it'll be 14 years by the time of retirement. And your last day working here will be January 2nd, 2017. At midnight. At midnight. Which I won't be staying. We're going to get every bit of value we cannot have here. We've gotten such value from you and your team, Joe. It's just been a pleasure working with you for the last 18 years in my role as county administrator. And it's just good to have you on the program today. And it's a bit of a fond farewell or reflection of the program where we're going to learn a little bit more about Joe and his roles and responsibilities, the good work that his office does, and give him a chance to look back a little bit as well as look forward. So let's start with setting the stage. We clearly are going to have viewers out there that haven't met you before. Tell us a little bit about yourself and when you first started as a prosecutor. Well, I'm originally from New England, as you may tell, from my slight accent. And I was a what was then a paramedic, although it was before that certification level was created, we would call mobile intensive care specialists are mixed for short. And I worked in a hospital and a rescue squad. And in my capacity of that, I was actually subpoenaed in for a court case and went to the courthouse and I was going to testify. But since I was working that day, I had my scrub whites on with my sethoscope. And apparently the defendant saw me and talked to his attorney and they accepted whatever offer there was and I would get to testify. But that just fascinated me. It really fascinated me. And I decided that I might like to do that. And so I applied to a number of law schools. Wisconsin accepted me. I had a couple of those accepted me there on the east coast and I figured, hey, I'm going to do this. Let me go somewhere I've never been before. And so I came to Wisconsin in 1985. I graduated in 1989 and I was 20 years old at the time. And then September 5th of 1989, I was hired by the NDA Jim Frisch in the Schwoing County as an assistant district attorney. So it's been 27 years. So prior to that experience, you were heading down kind of the medical career path. Well, I was pretty much at the top of the pay scale. I've been doing it for 13 years. So I was pretty much at the top of the pay scale. And quite frankly I was just looking for some other interest. And you go to the courtroom and that sparked you going back to school, going to law school. Right. It was just one of those coincidences where I think, I just try it. I'll take the law school admission test. I'll apply to school, see if they bite. They did. I decided to go to Wisconsin and off I came. And so you graduated from UW Madison with your law degree and then came right back to Schwoing County? Well, I was at Madison for the law school tenure. Right. And I went around, after I graduated, I went all over the state trying to get a prosecutor's job. I only wanted to criminal law and I didn't want to defend anyone. I wanted to prosecute them. And I think I had like 200 bucks in the bank left. 200 bucks to my name when Jim Frisch hired me. And I was like, oh, thank God. I'll be darned. And the other thing that prompted me was I learned in law school that if you graduate from a Wisconsin law school and you're going to practice in Wisconsin, you don't have to take a state bar exam. And I had been pretty much had it with exams. I mean, I was an older student. Right. Right. I was surrounded by like kids and I just had it with the exams. And so I decided to stay and I was fortunate to find a job in Schwoing County. So you're hired as a prosecutor. You worked as a prosecutor for a number of years and then at some point made the decision to run as the elected department and the district attorney. I did. Yep. And I made a decision in 2002. I won the election in November that year because they coincided with the presidential elections. And I took office in 2003 and I've been there ever since. And have you had any competition ever since? Only for the first election. For the first election. The very first one. But after that, no. I'll be darned. And tell me a little bit about your staff. How large is your staff? And I know you have kind of a unique mix. You're a unique department in that you have both state prosecutors and county support staff working with you. Share with our viewers a little bit about that relationship. How that works. Well, we have 7.5 full-time prosecutors to clean myself. They're all state employees. They're benefits and salary paid for by the state. We then have a county staff of 14 in our office. They're all obviously paid by the county. So in effect, we have two budgets. Every time budget time comes around. We have a state budget and we have the county budget. And the county provides for not only the salary and benefits of everyone that works in our office, but the operating costs and things of that nature. The state only pays salary and benefits. And so, and pretty much the state just tells us what's going to happen. Whereas in the county we have some leeway to adjust our own budget and to make decisions based on what's best for the office, what's best for the county. Yeah, I mentioned there's quite a difference from the state because here as we both well know sit down, we talk it through. What are your needs? What are new initiatives? What's happening? And of course for every department that's different, ultimately the county board will decide. And at the state level, I can't imagine you have a lot of input or those kinds of discussions. There's absolutely no input whatsoever. They just tell you. Even for salary and things of that nature, they just tell you. So we never have the opportunity to negotiate. Not to the degree we appreciate with the county and try and figure things out. Sure. So as you think back as your years as a prosecutor and as the district attorney, what have been some of your more memorable cases? Well, you know, it's funny because the serious ones are the most recent sticking your mind. That's just, you know, the way your memory works. And certainly the two 13 year olds that committed the homicide against the great grandmother, one of them that sticks out. We have a current case pending where the woman's alleged to have strangled or suffocated rather her toddler child. I mean, we've had a number of homicides. We don't have a lot of homicides. That is straight, you know, someone wanting to kill someone in Sheboyin County. But we've had a few. We had drug deals come up from Milwaukee to erase the competition. And there's been homicides there. We've had, you know, multiple day trials on those. And we have a lot of heroin cases. And I'm talking about not just delivery of heroin, but people deliver it and then someone dies from it. And that's under Wisconsin law. That's first degree reckless homicides, a serious, serious offense. And that is just blossomed in the last eight, nine years. And then we have some odd stuff. I mean, we had people remember, I think his name was Jiffy. He was a dog that was just huge. It was obese. It was just a huge dog. And it was in the winter. It apparently got wet. It's laid down on a sidewalk and it froze to the sidewalk. The owner couldn't get it off. They called police. Police called the Sheboyin County Humane Society. They came out and had some warm water get it off there. Actually took custody of it and get it down to its proper weight. I think it was even featured in one of the Fourth of July parades, I think at some time. And there was a misdemeanor charge against the woman because the dog was just in terrible shape. And anyway, so, and I believe he was adopted by someone else, he's doing fine. We've had some strange cases like that. Any case in particular that is the most memorable or that haunts you a little bit or disturbs you to this day, or has there just been so much on your plate at this point? There's nothing you haven't seen. Well, there's nothing we haven't seen. I always think maybe this will surprise me, but it doesn't. I think the two 13-year-olds and the grandmother were very disturbing. I think there was one young woman who gave birth at a workplace and killed her newborn infant. There was a trial on that. These things kind of stick with you. And I do the child pornography charges too. I have since I was an assistant as an attorney. One thing I will not miss as of January 2nd and that's just really, it's just tough to do that because we have to view the videos or view the photographs. And these little kids being sexually assaulted and it's being distributed. So, yeah, those things I won't miss at all. But it's all very disturbing. We know going into this field, it's going to be disturbing. We know that. But still, it's I was talking to someone from the office. Someone's been there a long time and she was telling me that the other day a man in a pig or pig can say where it was, come up to her and say, that's a very nice dress you're wearing and walked away. We get really suspicious and paranoid from what we do. And she said to me, I kept my eye on that guy. I wasn't sure what he was up to. You know, there are some people that just are nice people and say, hey, you're looking pretty good and don't want anything else. And yet our view is that, what the heck's that guy up to? That's the same with going, you know, just walking down the street, you see someone standing by, you know, I keep an eye on this guy. That's from the nature of the job and it gives you a skewed view of society because all we see are the criminals. We don't see for them what we see victims, we don't see for the most part, you know, the many, the vast majority of people that are good citizens, they do the job, they pay their taxes, you know, they support their schools, they have great kids. We don't see those people. We think about law enforcement and how they so often are dealing with people that are making bad choices and the law enforcement officers can get jaded and our 18 years of working together or interacting, you know, I've never once asked you how do you and your staff manage that kind of emotional, disturbing conduct, behavior, information? I, you know, I'm sure our viewers can share, can feel, you know, in our own homes things happen or in our families things happen or we may know someone or something bad happened, but when, and we know how emotionally trying that is on all of us, yet when you're dealing with it every single day and at the level that you are, how do you, what do you do to stay balanced? What do you and your staff do to stay grounded? The most important thing is to leave it at the office. You don't bring it home. It's a job you have to do and it can get quite emotional, particularly during a trial when you're trying to secure a conviction of someone has done something really nasty to someone and then when, and we do win the vast majority of our trials just the nature of things and when you, when you get a guilty verdict, it's very satisfying, but then it's time to go on to the next thing. So you really don't have time to reflect at any length on the emotions you may have during a particular trial. I think children as victims is the most emotional for any, for all of us and unfortunately there's a lot of those around the county, but you have to put it aside, you know, and you have to divorce yourself from what you have to do, what you see, what you experience because you have to do it at your job from your everyday life. That's amazing. It's amazing the work that you and your staff do. Last question I'll turn it over to Tom. Have there been any programs that you've created or initiated that have helped with this challenging workload? Well, we do have some diversion programs in effect. The first one was created by my predecessor with the check forward unit and then when I came on, we had a final way to raise revenue and so we had a county ordinance which created this check diversion program. You know, it's a misdemeanor, depending on the amount of the check, but it's a misdemeanor issue or a check that bounces. So what we try to do with this program is give the people a chance to pay whoever it is, most of the time, it's a merchant back. They pay a fee of $35 or 20% of the total amount of the checks, whatever it's higher, and then we give them about nine months to a year to pay back that merchant. Merchants really like this. I mean, you know, we don't charge them a fee for this and it brings in some revenue into the county. It's not a lot, but it brings in some. We also have Judge Sirkevich, Angela Sirkevich, began a veterans court about two years ago and we participate in that. We have a prosecutor that's on the veterans court and that's aimed at getting veterans of our military, the assistance and the counseling they may need because of their experiences in a relatively intensive treatment program, while at the same time allowing them the opportunity to not be convicted of crime because it was a serious crime. That's not an option. And then we just began our alcohol and drug treatment court, which was two years in the making, and that's for high risk, high need persons who addicted. We started about two years ago because of the heroin influx and opiate influx and it's gradually expanded to include alcohol, which everybody knows is a drug and we're just now beginning with that. I think we have six or eight people in the program already and it's another way to provide high supervision, high amounts of counseling to these people rather than just sending them to jail or prison. We're trying to decrease the cost and expense of jail and particularly prison and we think these programs will assist in doing that. Decrease cost as well as really give people the support they need to break out of those. Yeah, they got to break out of them. They'll do the rest of their lives. They're always in addicts. It's like an alcoholic, it's always an alcoholic. With their heroin addict or opening up, they're always going to be an addict. The key is give them the tools to get out of that. They're always going to be an addict, but to give them the tools to understand why they're addicted to it, look at the problems that may have caused the addiction, and get them into a position where they can make good decisions for themselves. And that hopefully becomes productive citizens. Excellent. Thank you, Joe. Tom. Thank you, Adam. Joe, it's been a pleasure working with you the last eight years. You and the law committee had a time for a long time. That's right. Eight years ago when I first got on the county board, my first assignment from then, Chairman Van der Steen was on the law committee where I first met you really and worked with you and it was a pleasure working with you then. It's been a pleasure working with you all through the time. So congratulations on your retirement. You oversee one of the 19 departments as Adam had talked about, but yours is unique because it's part state, your state employees, as you talked about the district attorneys are, but the county employees are there too. How does that work within the office setting when you have kind of multiple employers with the different employee groups? Well, even though we have multiple employers, I'm the guy that everyone comes to, any DA in the state. It doesn't matter who their employer is, the state of the county they go to the DA, they have problems and stuff. I like the thing, we had a lot of people that have been there a long time and we have a very good even though we're just inundated with work, we have a very good morale in our office. We encourage people to do something's bothering let's talk about it, let's not let it fester. Let's, you know, they have suggestions that make things better. We'll be happy to listen to them and if they're good suggestions, implement them. And I just am particularly proud of the level of morale we have in the office between not only the prosecutors but and the staff, but among everybody. I just like to think I had something to do with them staying so long and being content in their jobs and doing their jobs well. I'm sure it does. How many assistant DA's do you have and what is your total budget? We have 7.5 prosecutors by the latest legislative bureau analysis procedure, which is a bipartisan independent entity that advises the legislature. We are four and changed prosecutors shy of what we should have to handle a caseload. The need for prosecutors has gone up since the previous evaluation. What is it, 117? What is it about 140? And we really haven't gotten any relief from the state. Unfortunately, I mean in 1990, when I was hired, I was a county assistant district attorney. In 1999 the state took it over. We're going to pay for this, we're going to, you know, we'll take care of that. And just to be honest, they just dropped the ball ever since. And I think the last time we even got a half position, that's the half of the 7.5 was in 2002 if I'm not mistaken. And every year I've asked for more people and I'll think anyone in the state's gotten it. With the exception of the public defense office that over the last two budgets had 63 positions added and we had three, which were simply making half time, three quarter time, into full time. So it's not us versus them thing, but we need help too. So that's one of the significant problems we have. We still have the same amount of work to do that is, you know, it keeps increasing. Now budgets are just under a million dollars a year and that budget would be just the county budget. The state budget, they just tell us what it is, that's it. But the county budget is just shy of a million dollars a year. And I know your relationship, if you want to take a, here's your chance, relationship with the county board over the years and with the state attorney general's office, because you have to have two relationships. Right, and the county boys have been great. I mean they've been, you know, we don't agree on every single thing and we've, you know, I've had some moments of not conflict, but difference of opinion. But you know what you do is sit down, you work it out and you don't let that color the rest of your relationship with anybody else. And I think county board and I, the law committee members particularly, because they're my main contact, we've always been on work things out. They, you know, people listen to what your problem is, they'll listen to what solution you have to offer and they'll make a decision. Because, you know, the county board is essentially the fiscal watchdog for the county. And anything involving money or more money or increase in tax levy, they take a very close look at that. And there's got to be a compelling reason, I think for anyone to be successful or to find alternatives to that. And I think over the years, we've been able to do that with, I know those county board members I've dealt with have passed them out there anymore. There are new ones now that I'm just dying to deal with, particularly on the law committee. There's a couple of new people on the law committee. But as long as we're going to always sit down and talk about it and just not shut off the conversation, it'll work out and I think that's what has happened over the years. I really appreciate the county board being willing to listen to the unique problems we have in our office and to listen to our proposed solutions and to offer counter solutions or alternative solutions. I really appreciate that. Well, thank you. I think the key there is that there's back and forth in discussion before decisions are made. Yeah, you get ticked off to someone and say, I'm not talking to that guy again. What does that accomplish? Not much, right? Yeah, it doesn't cover anything. You're going to be, as you retire, there will be a new DA will come in and he's in your office right now. He is. And he's assuming because of the fact that he's running unopposed. Any thoughts going forward with the new DA that you want to? Well, I think the DA is in good hands. ADA, Joel Hermanski, is the only one on the ballot. So as long as he beats out like Mickey Mouse on down the road, it'll be fine. And he's been there 10 years, about 10 years. You know, I hired him out of Marquette Law School. He had a live experience with the Milwaukee DA's office gun team. They'll have teams down there. We don't have teams. We don't have enough people. And Joel, I'm very confident that the DA's office will be just great hands with Joel. I really do, I see. One thing I was afraid of, I didn't want someone coming in from the outside and deciding, I'm going to revamp everything. We really have come to the point where our organization is out of necessity, not out of choice. And for someone to convince them we're going to do a thing, all is different here. It's just not going to work because we tried them all. It just doesn't work. Joel knows the problems in our office. He knows what we face every day. And he's a good communicator. He's an excellent prosecutor. So I'm very confident that the Schwoing County DA's office will be in good hands. Very nice of you to say. What do you, to end with, my question is you're, and you talked about a little bit earlier, your concerns about crime in Schwoing County going forward, what are your biggest concerns relative to that? Well, you know, we had just an explosion of heroin, opiate use in the county. It's not just this guy, it's the whole state. Exactly. But in fact, you know, we have, you know, we do after hours warrants for the police. You know, crime doesn't end at five o'clock, Monday through Friday. So we're unavailable. Police need an immediate search warrant to help them get it to contact the judge, to take their testimony, whatever. And we have to make it faster and easier. We have these templates for drugs where all the drugs are listed. Well, prior to about eight years ago, heroin wasn't even on that list because it has so few heroin cases. Now, it's heroin, opiates on the most types of cases we have. So there's just, and we had the, you know, we had the first prosecution of someone who supplied heroin to a person that died in Schwoing County about eight years ago. And that was the first time that ever had been charged in the county. I mean, we just didn't have this before. Although, I really like to say that even though people, you know, look at the drug problem and some of the other problems we have, Schwoing County is still a very safe place to live. It's a very good place to raise your family. It's got great schools. It's got good community cooperation. So even though there are, you know, an uptick in crime, particularly some of the serious crimes with drugs, I think that, I still haven't lost my impression of Schwoing County as just one of the best places to raise your family to have kids to be safe. Frankly, coming from the district attorney, that's saying a lot because you obviously see the side of life that is not so positive all the time. So that's very well said. Thank you, Joe. Sure, Tom. Well, we only have a couple of minutes remaining and you've covered a lot of ground, but I wanted to go back to that reflection moment. 27 years. 27 years doing very challenging important work in the community. You talked about some of the challenges, some of the memorable moments, some of the good improvements that have been made. Any regrets, Joe? Anything that you look back on and you wish you would have become a doctor instead of a district attorney? No, I actually thought about that before I applied to law school and I would have to take somebody, I was a political science major, so I would have taken so many lab sciences, I couldn't do it, and then came the subpoena and I said, oh, this is what I want to do. No, I don't have any regrets. I mean, I miss the east coast just terribly. I miss fresh seafood and clams just terribly. And when I go home for my one vacation every year around Christmas and New Years, I just stuff myself with clams and mussels and all. It's not that bad though because I can't see the other side of Lake Michigan, so it's kind of like the ocean. So I really had no regrets. I never thought I'd be doing anything for 27 years because I had been bouncing around. I was in the Peace Corps, originally out of college. I was working in General Dynamics, inspecting nuclear submarine construction. I mean, and then I became a paramedic. I mean, I just didn't know what I was doing and now I found what I really like to do and I will miss all the people terribly, but I got to be honest, I'm not going to miss this job at all. 27 years being a prosecutor is more than enough and it's time for the younger guys to take over. Any foreshadow on what lies ahead for Joe DiCecco? Well, I'm going to stay in Sheboygan. I mean, I really like Sheboygan County. I live in the town of Wilson. I am going to teach more at Lakeland University, sorry, Lakeland University, pot time and I enjoy that. I've done that for several years now. And I'm going to travel more, but my home will be here. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for spending 30 minutes with us this afternoon. I hope you enjoyed listening and learning more about District Attorney Joe DiCecco. Every time I spend time with Joe, I learn something and he has had a remarkable life, tremendous experience, and the value he has brought this community. I don't know if there's anyone, anyone who lives here that fully appreciates your role and responsibilities and what you and your outstanding team do. So thank you, Joe. And thank you for your kind remarks. Good to have you here. And thank you for joining us. Next month we're going to continue to focus on the court system and that important responsibility, our family court commissioner, Ryan O'Rourke. He's going to be here. He's only been family court commissioner now for a little over a year. And I'm sure you're going to enjoy hearing from him and learning more about the family court commissioner's responsibilities. But until then, thank you for joining us. And Joe, best wishes in retirement. Thanks so much for joining us.