In a little under two weeks, Shawano County Sheriff Randy Wright will relinquish his badge after 40 years in law enforcement and eight years as sheriff.
It’s not quite the way he wanted to go out, having lost the election in November to Shawano Police Officer Adam Bieber, who will be sworn in as the new sheriff Jan. 5.
“I’d have liked to walk out of here and simply say, ‘I’m retired,’” Wright said.
But the initial disappointment has subsided somewhat, replaced by an eagerness to start a new chapter in his life.
“When God closes one door, he’s going to open another door for you,” Wright said. “I feel he has.”
With 10 grandchildren, Wright is looking forward to becoming “a full-time grandpa,” and spending more time with family members.
“Since April, it’s mostly been about the campaign,” he said. “I hadn’t had much of a chance to really sit back and enjoy the family. I missed a lot.”
Wright said a recent visit to see his father in the nursing home was more relaxed than it had been in a long time.
“It always seemed I had something on my mind, something to do with the sheriff’s office or the County Board, or I had a meeting or doings to go to,” Wright said. “I didn’t have that pressure anymore.”
Wright said he was offered some part-time law enforcement work at one of the villages but turned it down.
“In last couple of years, I had both shoulders redone — bicep, rotator cuff, bone chips taken out of both shoulders — and a little bit of arthritis from each one of them,” Wright said. “I’m feeling good now after about 10 years of being in pain with that. I’m finally kind of fixed up. Do I really want to go back out there and take a chance, at 58 or 59 years old, of wrestling and tussling with some young buck out there and have my shoulders redone again?”
Wright has been in law enforcement since he was in tech school, balancing his education with work as a part-time deputy for both Oconto and Brown counties.
He then worked as a part-time deputy for Shawano County while getting his associate degree and joined the department full-time in 1976, moving from jailer to dispatcher to road deputy.
He went to the Shawano Police Department in 1981, working as a patrolman there for 25 years until he ran for sheriff in 2007.
“I was very eager to get into this profession,” Wright said. “Coming from the small town of Suring, the excitement would be if the fire siren went off; you’d see the fire trucks going out, ambulance going out.”
Wright said he will be taking quite a few memories with him.
“Some funny ones,” he said, like tumbling down a flight of stairs when he surprised by a bat that flew by his head, or the practical jokes that went on when the Sheriff’s Department provided the early morning road report for the local radio station.
“WTCH learned they would tape us first before they aired it live,” he said.
There were some scary memories, too, like being shot at by a man with a rifle outside of what was then the First and Last Chance Saloon in Shawano. A fellow officer was hit in the ankle during that encounter by a bullet fragment after it exploded on the blacktop.
There are also things Wright would like to forget.
“Some bad memories as far as the homicides and a murder-suicide that I handled,” he said.
There have been numerous changes in law enforcement since Wright started his career.
“I started back when the only thing you really had was a wooden baton and you had to really wrestle with people,” he said.
Very little training was required in those days, he said, but as opportunities for additional training came up, Wright jumped at them.
“I loved taking whatever was available that I was able to take for advancing, for learning,” he said. “Evidence technician, homicide investigation, interview and interrogation techniques and tactics, arson investigations.”
Technology has also changed since Wright started.
“I remember first starting out when the radios that we had (at the Sheriff’s Department) were four channels,” he said.
That caused a little envy of the Shawano Police Department, which was a little more advanced.
“The city was getting newer equipment, coming with radios that had maybe 50 frequencies,” he said.
As for communication, technology was still a long way off from today’s texts and e-mails.
“We still had the old ticker-tape teletype,” Wright said. “You’d have a spool of tape and when you’d do your teletype, it would punch little holes in that tape.”
During his tenure as sheriff, Wright fulfilled his campaign pledge to further embrace technology and get mobile data centers into the squad cars.
That’s one of the things he said he is most proud of, but there are others, including adding part-time deputies to free up the full-time staff and handle duties such as court details and transports.
“I’m most proud of the team atmosphere I wanted to put in place,” he said.
“The main thing I’m proud of is the people that I work with,” he said. “These people are dedicated, devoted people. They give selflessly of themselves.”
Wright said he is looking forward to putting aside the politics that came with the sheriff’s job.
“I’m now no longer a politician. The sheriff’s position shouldn’t be partisan,” he said. “I no longer have to worry if I’m tea party affiliated or conservative affiliated. I’m an individual. I’m myself, a free citizen, free to do what I want.”
Wright said he was encouraged that after losing the primary, support across party lines came forward for a write-in campaign in November.
He said Republicans, Democrats and Independents came together on his behalf to form a support group.
“That was humbling,” Wright said. “It was a proud moment. That meant a lot to me.”
Wright said he has no regrets about what was a great 40-year run in law enforcement.
“I’ve had ups and downs and all-arounds,” he said. “I’ve got nothing to hang my head about.”
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