Brown Is The New Blue

Throughout this summer, I have been fortunate enough to be an intern with the Brown County Sheriff’s Office. Through the course of this internship I have observed the four main divisions of the Sheriff’s office including the Patrol Division, Investigative Division, Jail Division, and Courthouse Security for a total of 256 hours in just three months. Many of the experiences in each division were similar in execution, I was assigned to an officer for the duration of the shift and followed their movements and actions as much as possible, within jeopardizing the situation, my safety, the officer’s safety, the general safety of everyone involved. Law enforcement is a very dangerous and grueling job, but the men and women of the Brown County Sheriff’s Office handle the job admirably and do so while serving a rather large population.

Within Brown County, Wisconsin, there are twenty-four incorporated communities that make up the over 248,000 people (numbers according to the 2010 United States Census). Three of these municipalities (the City of Green Bay, City of De Pere, and Village of Ashwaubenon) have their own full time police department with completely full time staff that services the citizens of their community specifically. Two others (Village of Pulaski and the Village of Wrightstown) have their own police departments with full-time and part-time police officers. Two of these communities (the Village of Hobart and Town of Lawrence) share a joint police department that maintains full-time and part-time police officers. Twelve (Town of Eaton, Town of Glenmore, Town of Green Bay, Town of Holland, Town of Humboldt, Town of Ledgeview, Town of Morrison, Town of New Denmark, Town of Pittsfield, Town of Rockland, Town of Scott, and the Town of Wrightstown) of the towns within Brown County rely solely on the Brown County Sheriff’s Department to provide law enforcement services for their borders. The trouble that these areas can run into, no matter how small they may be, is that the closest responding officer may be twenty to thirty minutes away… on a good day, taking the most direct route with no traffic or construction. The final five villages within Brown County are a hybrid of all the others in that they all have guaranteed police coverage within the village 24/7, yet they do not have their own police departments. The Villages of Suamico, Howard, Allouez, Bellevue, and Denmark, all contract through the Brown County Sheriff’s Office to have a patrol officer assigned to the village, and the village alone.

While the Brown County Sheriff’s Office has jurisdiction within the entire county, the existence of city, village, and town funded police agencies in certain areas means that only when that specific agency does not have the manpower to handle emergent calls with the Sheriff’s Office respond. This does happen more often the people realize as some departments may only have one or two officers on at a time, and if just one call for service requires both officers, all other calls with either have to wait, or be taken care of by a sheriff’s deputy. Green Bay is the only other Police agency in Brown County other than the Sheriff’s Office to have more than three patrol officers working at any given time. For those communities that contract for 24/7 service from the Sheriff’s Office, the officers assigned to work that village will only take calls in that village unless dire circumstances require them to leave, as would be the same for an independent agency like Green Bay or De Pere to do. The Green Bay area is not the only metropolitan area to incorporate this contracted system of police services. Los Angeles County services over thirty smaller municipalities for police services among several other smaller services. This is considered the most prominent example of intergovernmental contracting in the United States (Mehay, 55).

In lieu of paying to maintain an entire police department including all equipment, officer pay and benefits, training, maintenance, and more, these five villages mentioned earlier contract with the Brown County Sheriff’s Office to use their personnel. According to an article found in the Journal of Public Procurment “The goal of most shared service initiatives is cost savings through economies of scale, followed by efficiency, providing higher quality service, and reducing redundancy and standardization” a goal which directly correlates to what these villages see as a result of this contracted service (Schwester, 96). Each position that an officer fills for a specific village is actually paid for by the village, as well as the squad car that officer uses (all of which are marked specifically for that village along with a mention of the Sheriff’s Office). These officers assigned to the villages still where the exact same uniform as the other Sheriff’s Deputies that they work with, they are just assigned the specific village and village squad car. Each village negotiates with the Sheriff’s Office over how many officers they will have, how many squad cars, and what type of coverage they do and do not want. For example, the village of Howard maintains at least one Howard specific deputy 24 hours a day, and two from 11:00am to 3:00am every day. In addition, they also maintain three Direct Enforcement Officers that focus on village specific problems such as local ordinances and crime prevention, as well as take calls when necessary. The village of Allouez on the other hand, only maintains one deputy and one Direct Enforcement Officer. Each village decides what the needs of the community are, and negotiate with the Sheriff to meet those needs. The squad cars paid for by each village and properly marked by the village the represent, and some are different vehicles then the remainder of the Sheriff’s Office Fleet. The majority of the Sheriff’s Office uses the Dodge Charger, while the villages of Howard and Bellevue each use Ford Explorers. This decision is made based on both requests and needs of the officers who work these villages, as well as simple cost-effectiveness. It should be noted that the residents of these villages do not pay anymore taxes than other residents of Brown County, the funds for these officers is within the village budget. Having a larger government entity provide police coverage for an area is not at all unheard of in the United States. Both Pennsylvania and New Jersey utilize their respective state police to provide police services to smaller municipalities as well as many other states using consolidated police services like Hobart-Lawrence Police and the village contracts within Brown County (Lockwood & Wyant, 463).

Also, not all of these villages simply decided they wanted permanent coverage before trying to have their own police department. For years the Village of Denmark maintained an extremely small police department to respond to calls for service. However, as early as January 1st, 2016, that department has since become non-existent after the police chief announced his retirement. The village board looked at many options in replacing the outgoing chief, and the department as a whole. Costs and exiting staff helped the village board determine that a three-year contract with the Brown County Sheriff’s Office was in the best interest of the village government, and the residents of the community. However, this coverage is not like the other four villages that contract for service in that they only have two Direct Enforcement Officers assigned to the village, with no patrol officers. The coverage is approximately seventy-five hours each week, including work within the Denmark School District through the use of a School Resource Officer. An article that goes more in-depth with the situation specific numbers and various perspectives can be found through the Green Bay Press Gazette. What makes the choice to switch to contracting for police service is research that suggests “The police function is often the last to be given up by a political jurisdiction.” And while a jurisdiction like Denmark may give up the police service, they still enlist a deal of control which exists in a “desirable level of service” agreement within the contract, which is what we see with the use of two Direct Enforcement Officers and no patrol (Misner, 446).

The work of a Brown County Direct Enforcement Officer should not be taken lightly though. In 2006, the Wisconsin Association of Women Police named then Bellevue Direct Enforcement Officer Tracy Steffens, who had previously worked Bellevue as a patrol officer, Woman Law Enforcement Officer of the Year. Articles discussing this impressive achievement did not come because she was a woman in a male dominated profession, but through the positive impact she has within the community. I can speak personally as both someone who has heard of her accomplishments, and as a friend that she was extremely dedicated to this village and work tirelessly to make it a safer, stronger, and better place for people to live and grow. Without the contract the Sheriff’s Office had in place with the village of Bellevue, she would not have been able to make the positive impact she did on the village, and Bellevue would be worse off for it. It is men and woman like Deputy Steffens, now serving as an Investigative Sergeant with the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, that make the Brown County Sheriff’s Office a force to be reckoned with for criminals of all caliber. The Sheriff’s Office in Brown County is ever changing, adding technology, training, officers, and village-specific coverage. The explosive growth of the Green Bay metropolitan area reflects the same growth seen within the Sheriff’s Office as many of the once rural areas deputies patrolled have now become suburban communities that are highly desired to live in. This reflects the overall trend in changes to law enforcement organizational structures since the twentieth century (Reiss, 55).

Lockwood, B., & Wyant, B. R. (2014). Who cares who protects us? The relationship between type of police coverage and citizen satisfaction with the police. Police Practice & Research, 15(6), 461–475. doi:10.1080/15614263.2013.827428

Mehay, Stephen. (1979). Intergovernmental Contracting for Municipal Police Services: An Empirical Analysis. Land Economics. 55(1) 59–72

Misner, Gordon E. (1961). The Police Service Contract in California. An Instrument of Functional Integration. The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and Police Science 52(4) 445–452

Reiss, Albert J. (1992). Police Organization in the Twentieth Century. Crime and Justice 15(Modern Policing)) 51–97

Schwester, R. W. (2011). EXAMINING THE MERITS OF MUNICIPAL POLICE CONTRACTING. Journal of Public Procurement, 11(1), 95–107.