Gillett council learns about police mutual aid

The Gillett police chief used his monthly report to the city council Oct. 6 to explain how mutual aid agreements work to provide safety across Oconto County.

Chief Shane Breitenbach said he heard some comment in the community after his squad car was spotted recently responding to an incident in the Breed-Mountain area.

The incident — a serious car crash — fell in the realm of mutual aid among the county’s small cadre of law enforcement agencies, Breitenbach said.

“Most people think – they have a certain number in their mind – how many officers are on (duty) in the county. I’ve heard everything from 20, 30, ‘There’s gotta be 40 people.’ There isn’t,” he said. “In Oconto County at any given time, for the most part there’s four deputies. That’s it. When you consider four deputies in an area that’s 1,100 or 1,200 square miles, that’s not much.”

Although the county has a huge land mass, its population of 40,000 can’t afford police departments the size of larger communities, Breitenbach said. He estimated that at any given time, the city of Oconto has three or four officers on duty; Oconto Falls usually has two, sometimes three, while Lena and Suring have an officer but not 24 hours a day.

On the day in question, Breitenbach said two deputies were in Townsend after a drug overdose death, another deputy was handling the case of an unresponsive female in Abrams, while the fourth deputy was processing evidence at the office in Oconto.

Three crashes occurred right in the center of the county at that time.

“I was the closest to two of the crashes,” Breitenbach said, and so he went to Breed. “Under mutual assistance, mutual aid agreements through the state, any law enforcement agency can reach out to any other law enforcement agency for assistance, and that’s a typical example. There was no one else. There was me. I was the only one available.”

For another recent incident, a domestic argument involving a weapon located near the county line, he was the only officer who could assist the lone deputy who was responding.

“When people come up and ask questions, I’m more than happy to explain. To be transparent and explain how these things happen helps everyone understand — when they do see something that seems to be a little off — to know why, the reasons behind it,” Breitenbach said.

Alderman Debbie Rudie said that when the fire department goes to a call outside of the city, they make sure there’s staff available to cover the city.

“When you’re going to Breed, because you’re telling me you’re the closest one and nobody else is around, if we have a call here in the area that we’re paying for, who’s going to take care of that?” Rudie asked.

Breitenbach said it comes down to the severity of the call. “Anything that has to do with health or safety” is going to get priority, he said.

He added that he has responded on multiple occasions to reports of pulseless, non-breathing people outside the city.

“At that point, there’s nothing happening in the city, but someone’s dying, and I know and dispatch knows I’m going to get there before anybody else,” he said. “It’s imperative that life trumps someone’s barking dog or there’s a fender bender in a parking lot.”

Mutual assistance agreements are reciprocal, he added. If a serious incident were to occur in Gillett while Breitenbach and sheriff’s deputies were away on other calls, the Oconto County Emergency Dispatch Center would automatically call the Oconto Falls Police Department. If those officers couldn’t respond, Shawano County would get the call, he said.

“We all have to work together,” Breitenbach said. “It may not be in our areas. But to get the job done and get it done safely, we have to rely upon each other.”

Fire Chief Kurt Hicks noted that his department has 15-25 firefighters, so it’s possible to send four people and a truck to another community while still being able to cover the City of Gillett.

“Police don’t have that, not in small towns,” Hicks said. “And it is critical, when these things happen – if they can get him there quicker, that’s what they’re going to do.”

“It’s not like Gillett’s hanging out in the wind,” Breitenbach said. “That’s not how it works. Everyone’s covering everything, but it’s getting the most important people to the most critical incidents first.”

“It seems to be a lot lately,” Rudie said. “I think we just need to talk about it more.”

Mayor Josh McCarthy said Gillett recently added a fourth officer to its rotation and suggested that Oconto County should also review its law enforcement roster.

“The county needs to get more officers, period. One, the county has grown; two, there’s more incidents. That’s something that they need to figure out,” McCarthy said. “It boils down to: ‘How much of our city resources are we spending going other places?’ And I think that’s the basis of the question.”