Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a series of stories drawn from recent interviews with Shawano County sheriff candidates Randy Wright and Adam Bieber.
Incumbent Sheriff Randy Wright, who faces Shawano police officer Adam Bieber in the Aug. 12 Republican primary, is touting experience as a key factor in the race.
Bieber maintains Wright’s poor working relationships with other agencies shows a need for a leadership change at the Shawano County Sheriff’s Department.
Bieber also argues that his experience as a patrol officer is equal to the experience Wright had back in 2006 when Wright first ran for sheriff.
“I have the same amount of management experience as Randy did when he ran for sheriff,” Bieber said. “He had more years of experience, but one could argue that a year is a wash-and-rinse. Every year is the same.”
Bieber has worked in law enforcement for 14 years and has been with the Shawano Police Department since 2003.
Wright started out at the sheriff’s office in 1976, working as a jailer, then a dispatcher and then a patrol deputy.
He then spent 25 years at the Shawano Police Department as a patrol officer.
“At the Police Department, I got further training,” Wright said, including training as an evidence technician. “I was officer in charge numerous times during my 25 years there.”
Officer in charge is basically the lead officer on duty, usually during the night shift and on weekends, when there are no lieutenants on duty.
According to the Police Department, Bieber, who generally works the day shift, has not served as an officer in charge, but has been lead officer during his shift.
Bieber does acknowledge that Wright had probably dealt with a wider variety of cases by the time he left the Police Department to become sheriff.
“I’m sure he’s seen a little bit more than me,” Bieber said.
Wright has been sheriff since 2007. But his tenure hasn’t been without controversy.
He has on occasion clashed with County Board supervisors, though Wright says that has been limited to a faction of the board, mainly over their opposition to spending on evidence storage solutions.
Wright acknowledges that his exchanges with supervisors have sometimes been “a little rough.” He said that comes from standing up for what he believes in.
“I’m straight-forward with things,” he said. “I see a need for what needs to be done and I stick to my guns with it.”
Bieber said he wants to improve working relationships with the County Board and other agencies that he maintains have suffered under Wright, including the Shawano Police Department and the district attorney’s office.
Bieber said he couldn’t be specific about problems he is alleging between the Sheriff’s Department and district attorney’s office.
“I’m not sure of all the issues,” he said.“I don’t want to speak for them. I just think there’s an argument there between the two, a disagreement.”
The district attorney’s office has declined to comment on the sheriff’s race.
As for the Shawano Police Department, Wright disputes Bieber’s allegation that no cooperation is taking place.
“This baffles me because we work all the time together,” he said. “We work with them. We share equipment. We share different information with them.”
Wright said the city was also approached about going in on an evidence storage building; something Bieber said should be done before the county moves ahead on its own with evidence storage solutions.
Several sources at the city have confirmed that such conversations did take place between Wright and former police chief Ed Whealon, but there was no interest on the city’s part in getting involved in the project.
One collaborative effort that was put in place was the firearms training range located at the landfill — a project that included the Shawano police and sheriff’s departments, Menominee Tribal Police and Menominee County Sheriff’s Department.
While the facility is available to all those agencies, there is very little joint training. That’s something Bieber has taken issue with. He said he would push for more collaborative efforts like joint training and more sharing of resources.
The Shawano police and sheriff’s departments each hold a variety of training sessions and courses that other departments are invited to participate in, and the departments have collaborated on such things as active-shooter training.
However, according to sources at the Shawano Police Department who asked not to be quoted directly because of the sensitive nature of the race, some collaborative training efforts have been impractical because of scheduling conflicts and because the departments don’t always share the same policies and approaches toward training.
As for sharing resources, they said there has never been a situation when needed equipment, resources or assistance was unavailable to the Police Department and vice versa.
Incident lists provided to the media on a daily basis from both departments frequently show mutual assistance being provided, including the use of one another’s K9 units.
A memorandum of understanding has also been drafted that would allow the Shawano, Bonduel, Tigerton and Stockbridge-Munsee police to join the Sheriff’s Department Special Response Team. It’s currently being reviewed by Shawano’s city attorney.
Wright said the agreement is “very close to being approved.”
There were, however, some early hurdles.
The Sheriff’s Department initially intended to assess a fee for joining the SRT.
Wright said the fee was eventually dropped with the understanding that departments would provide their own equipment.
“Any other equipment would be shared,” Wright said.