Police calls are up 18% compared with this time last year, but that doesn’t translate to more crime in the city of Shawano.
From Jan. 1 through Aug. 5, the Shawano Police Department responded to 5,517 calls, compared with 4,675 for the same time period last year. Besides the criminal investigations, officers also respond to quality-of-life complaints, traffic-related incidents, assisting other first responders and other service calls, according to Police Chief Mike Musolff.
“Shawano continues to be a safe community,” Musolff said. “Our officers remain committed to being visible, responding quickly, investigating crimes thoroughly and working with residents to solve problems. Public safety is a partnership, and we appreciate the support we receive from our community.”
Several areas where the police department has seen an increase compared with last year include disturbances, harassment calls, thefts, noise complaints and property damage traffic crashes. Musolff noted that calls for vehicle break-ins for the summer have gone down, though.
Decreases in certain categories have been seen, too, specifically in drug-related incidents, welfare checks, suspicious activity complaints, family disturbance calls and picking up people with outstanding warrants. Despite the decrease in welfare checks, they still comprise hundreds of calls each year, according to Musolff.
“Some community-service type calls remain among our highest-volume activities. We continue to respond to hundreds of welfare checks, medical assists, agency assists, disturbances and traffic-related incidents,” Musolff said. “Those calls consume a significant amount of our officers’ time and reflect the wide range of services today’s police departments provide.”
Calls about juvenile mischief in city parks continue to be a problem in Shawano, according to Musolff, although the numbers remain relative flat from last year to this year. While he reported in June that there were no major problems near Memorial Park when Sun Drop Dayz was happening, there were several instances where juveniles were getting into fights at other parks in the city.
Musolff said that many of the juvenile incidents in Shawano could be curtailed if parents paid more attention to their children.
“They’re either allowing them to go out and cause mischief in the city, which is alarming to me, or they don’t know they’re sneaking out,” Musolff said. “What we need is to parents to step up and make sure they’re monitoring their children and what their kids are doing at night, just like you would during the day.”
Mental health issues continue to be an issue in police calls, although those seem to be trending downward in 2026; the police have responded to 24 calls so far. In 2025, 35 calls were related to mental health.
“We’re acting many times as a counselor, even though we’re not a counselor,” Musolff said. “We wear many hats. That’s one area I’d like to see the state work on. We have all this money, and they don’t know what to do with it. Work on mental health.”
Dealing with off-road vehicles has been a rare issue, with city police handling four calls this year and three for the same time period in 2025. However, this tends to be an underreported statistic, according to Musolff, as most complainers tend to post on social media in lieu of calling dispatchers to report.
“Despite what you see on Facebook, we don’t get a lot of complaints,” Musolff said. “People seem to think that reporting to social media is reporting to the police, and that’s not the case. We may catch things on there, and we may make phone calls to follow up on things from social media, but that isn’t our primary concern. Our primary concern is following up on calls that come in to the dispatch center.”
Another notable statistic is the number of times officers have to assist at a scene where ambulances are responding to medical calls. So far in 2026, there have been 368 calls for ambulance assistance, more than one per day.
Musolff said there are currently at least two officers on duty at all times, but that still stretches the department thin at times. He believes two more officers for the department who could work a 12-hour shift during the afternoon and evening hours, when the call volume is highest, could help increase response times.
“I think it’s time to start evaluating that more,” Musolff said. “The last increase was through a grant, which was for a detective position (six years ago). That was a position increase, but now we have a detective and a detective lieutenant, so that takes people off the road.”
lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com
