To the editor:
Regarding the sheriff department probe, I have a few concerns. The first thing that comes to my mind is why is our sheriff trying to stop this probe? Is there something he fears that it will reveal?
Remember that this all started with $1,000 missing. Then it was found by different committees that money was missing twice before. It took months before any member of the county board was even notified that the original $1,000 was missing and that money was transferred to cover that loss without any committee approving a transfer of funds.
How much money is really missing? How many more times has it gone missing? Why weren’t any committees notified? It also amazes me that it took months and complaints from some of his staff before a protocol was finally put in place.
The sheriff states that it’s a “witch hunt,” yet he had a county board member’s home searched, based on even less evidence of wrongdoing, for drugs. That raid was based on an anonymous tip and a field drug test of a so-called marijuana leaf, which in my opinion looks like (from a photo obtained from the Langlade County Sheriff’s Department) a fern. How much of the taxpayers’ money was wasted on that raid? Now the sheriff is worried about the poor taxpayers’ money, which in the past he had no problem spending.
He complains that the probe breaks policy by not having a sworn affidavit. In the drug raid, did he not also break policy with an anonymous tip that didn’t have a sworn affidavit, and break other protocol by not doing two additional garbage pickups, not notifying city police or the county district attorney?
I guess we will have to wait to find out how much the lawsuit from the ill-advised raid will cost us taxpayers.
As for the three detectives that confronted Mr. Bieber at the Republican Party picnic, the sheriff stated they were off duty and had that right. I agree that they have that right as long as they didn’t cross the line into harassment and didn’t use any county equipment. This investigation will determine if that line was crossed.
I would hope that this investigation would go forward and that the county board will not interfere with it. Hopefully most members of the board will realize that the taxpayers deserve and have the right to finally know the truth.
Rita Ecke,
Shawano
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