DATE: December 8, 2005
The regular meeting of the Sauk County Law Enforcement Committee was held on Thursday, December 8, 2005, at 9:30 A.M., in the Community Room, D102A, 1300 Lange Court, Baraboo, Wisconsin.
The meeting was properly posted and all interested parties were notified.
Members Present: Fordham, Tollaksen, Sinklair, Montgomery
Members Excused: Carlson
Members Absent:
Others Present: W. Schneider, Sauk County Humane Society; M. Hafemann; K. Fults; R. Meister; J. Welsch; T. Gruber; J. Spencer; R. Stammen; H. Weinke; J. Prantner; J. Tobin; B. Rupert; Paul Differt and Tom Reigard, Juneau County Sheriff’s Department; B. Hinze; B. Manning
Sheriff Stammen said he had no communications other than to notify the committee that former Sauk County Sheriff Mike Spencer has passed away on Tuesday, December 6th. Spencer’s funeral will be on Friday, December 9th. Stammen said many of the department’s employees would be attending the funeral and the Sheriff’s Department is providing an Honor Guard at the funeral home, as well as during visitation at the church and for the funeral itself.
Deputy Brent Rupert was selected as the October Employee of the Month. Rupert was nominated for his actions in responding to a domestic abuse complaint in which a male was hitting a female and threatening her with a large butcher knife. Upon the arrival of Deputy Rupert the male exited the house but refused to drop the knife, although Rupert had drawn his service weapon. When Rupert told the male he would release the canine the male dropped the knife but did resist arrest by fighting with Deputy Rupert. The male was cuffed and in custody by the time the backup officers arrived at the scene. Chair Montgomery presented Rupert with the award. Sheriff Stammen said the incident highlighted the strength of the canine program in that the threat of the dog deployment proved to be an effective incentive for the male to drop his weapon.
Sauk County Animal Shelter Director Wendy Schneider reported there were 59 dogs and 80 cats taken in at the Shelter in November; 46 dogs and 58 cats were adopted. The UW Veterinary School has been helping the Humane Society with free spaying and neutering which has been very helpful to the Shelter. Schneider reported they had handled 51 animal calls in the month and of those seven were bite cases. Five of the bite cases were able to be home quarantined because they were current on rabies vaccinations.
The Village of Loganville will be adding a line to their 2005 property tax bills reminding citizens to pay their cat and dog licensing fees.
The Christmas fund drive, which was a mailing, was very successful.
Shelter workers plan to attend a retreat in the Dells area on January 21st, which is a Saturday. The Shelter is open on Saturdays and Schneider asked the committee if the Shelter should be closed while all the regular employees were at the retreat or if they wanted it to be open. They do have a responsible high school student who could handle the visitors to the Shelter along with other volunteers to back her up. The regular Shelter staff will care for the feeding and sanitary needs of the animals prior to going to the retreat. The committee agreed that if Schneider was confident in the student’s ability to handle the Shelter with the help of volunteers the Shelter should be kept open for regular hours.
The new fence at the Shelter is up and now the dogs can run and play in the fenced area. This has taken a lot of pressure off the dog walking volunteers and aids in socializing the dogs by giving them an opportunity to interact with other dogs in shared outdoor time.
Motion by Sinklair, seconded by Tollaksen, to approve payment of the Sheriff’s November, 2005, bills in the amount of $142,547.02. Motion carried unanimously.
Coroner Hinze’s November expenses included two autopsies. She reported that her account for autopsies, and the accounts for vehicle maintenance and fuel are over budget but her budget overall is still in the black.
Motion by Tollaksen, seconded by Fordham, to approve payment of the Coroner’s
November bills in the amount of $2,846.58.
Motion carried unanimously.
Motion by Tollaksen, seconded by Sinklair, to authorize Captain Meister to solicit bids for the purchase of eight 2006 Ford Crown Victoria squad cars. Motion passed unanimously.
The committee went to the jail’s sally port to inspect one of the squad cars to look at the equipment stored in the vehicle’s trunk.
Sergeant Welsch also showed the committee cases containing 37 rifles, which had arrived in the last few days. The rifles were received under the 1033 program and the only cost was for shipping the guns. Deputy Harold Weinke showed the committee one of the rifles which he had cleaned and said that it appeared the weapons were new and only needed oiling and cleaning. If the rifles had been purchased from a vendor the cost would have been approximately $30,000. The guns will be provided to all the patrol deputies.
The committee had already approved accepting the 37 rifles but they were asked to authorize acceptance of a Humvee, which Reigard and Differt had brought down.
Motion by Fordham, seconded by Tollaksen, to authorize the Sheriff’s
Department to take possession of the government surplus Humvee
vehicle.
Motion carried unanimously.
The committee was informed that both Columbia County and Dane County do contract with municipalities within their borders to provide police services outside the normal coverage.
Sheriff Stammen said that the Property and Insurance Committee voted at their last meeting to accept the bid of Bachman Construction of Madison for the holding area in the old County Jail on the third floor of the Historic Courthouse. The holding area is expected to be completed around June, 2006.
The payment for 2005 for detainees under the Criminal Justice Benefits program has been received. The payment is $14,446. Currently there are no Rock County inmates in the Sauk County Jail. They have been experiencing a low inmate population and there aren’t as many as normal from Dane County, Inmate populations are traditionally lower overall during this season.
The November billings for inmates from Rock and Dane Counties is a combined amount of $76,034 for housing and meds. The year-to-date revenues are $1,064,146.92.
There was no report on electronic monitoring for November because the bill hasn’t been received for the leased equipment.
Program Coordinator for the Jail, Tiffani Gruber, spoke to the committee regarding the jail programs. She said she recently received a phone call from a former inmate who started the GED program while in jail. Although the innate was released some time ago, he continued to work on his GED and called Deputy Gruber to let her know he’d completed it. There have been nine inmates who completed their GED requirements and 2 who completed the HSED requirements. Gruber said there are two females from Dane County who are one test away from completion.
The art therapy class is over but the instructor for the classes is working on her Master’s Degree in Art Therapy. As part of her thesis preparation she’ll be providing a series of free sessions and using the data gathered during the classes as part of her research. Gruber said this is a class that costs $900 but the Jail will get it at no cost.
The inmates have completed the landfill cleanup project. Deputy Gruber said the project, which took eight days, was done by a dozen Huber inmates. The big Ford Van was used to transport them out there with sack lunches and bottled water. John Carroll said they did an excellent job and completed the work in a very short time. The crews worked from 8 AM to 2:30 PM.
ATTIC Correctional will be providing Anger Management classes. All inmate classes provided this year were funded by amounts diverted from toher expense accounts but the 2006 jail budget contains a separate account just for programs for inmates.
There was nothing to report under the Communication Center.
There were no fatal accidents in November.
There were 99 prisoner transports in November.
November overtime was 1,537 paid hours and 152 hours of compensatory time, for a total of 1,689 hours. For supervisory overtime, there were 151 hours total; 117 of which were holiday hours, 24 hours of overtime paid in lieu of ordering in a union employee after all eligible union employees declined to work the overtime, and 10 hours for team callouts or training.
Clay Lins has been permanently assigned to the Patrol Division.
Transport Team member Gene Clingman has requested a leave of absence so he can spend extended time in Florida.
Transport Team Member Ed Spencer will be resigning from the Transport Team.
Employees Margaret Danner and Paul Hefty are retiring. Danner, a former dispatcher and current jail reception clerk, is leaving on January 3rd, 2006; and Detective Hefty’s last day is February 12, 2006.
Captain Meister said two recent Crime Stopper hints led to positive results. One resulted in breaking up a juvenile drinking party and the other led to the return of a stolen weapon.
The Wisconsin Sheriff’s and Deputy Sheriff’s Convention is being held in February at the Howard Johnson Hotel in Wisconsin Dells.
Sheriff Stammen stated he had received notification from the Civil Process Clerk that there were some accounts for 2005 that were uncollected. The uncollected accounts will be placed into inactive status so they don’t continue to come up when past due accounts are run. However, the records stay in the system to alert the clerk if those with unpaid accounts attempt to have papers served in the future. They would have to pay off the open account and prepay for service. The amount of uncollected paper service money for 2005 was $289.30.
The Kops for Kids party for the Reedsburg area will be on December 10, and the party for all the remaining areas will be on December 17th.
Captain Hafemann said he had received a preliminary contract from the US Marshal’s office and they had set their daily amount at $55.93.
Motion
by Sinklair, seconded by Fordham, to adjourn the meeting.
Motion carried unanimously.
Repectfully Submitted: Joan Fordham, Secretary