WAUSHARA COUNTY (NBC 26) — Nearly 200 Waushara County residents came to a county board meeting to express distrust in the sheriff’s office after documents highlighting sexual harassment allegations and misuse of funds came to light this fall.
- Waushara County Sheriff’s Office public records on internal investigations detail complaints of sexual harassment against deputies.
- The Waushara County Board directed the Sheriff to repay more than $20,000.
- The County Board said they will be investigating the County 911 Dispatch Center after a delayed response to an active shooter threat in early October.
At the Tuesday night meeting, County Board chair, John Jarvis, says nearly 200 people attended.
Only a few spoke during public comment, and one person spoke in support of the Sheriff’s Office.
“Honestly, I wasn’t very surprised to see that many, in fact I thought there might be a few more,” Jarvis says.
The County Board addressed a recent investigation that showed the County Sheriff, Walter Zuehlke, had collected more than $20,000 from the board over the past few years.
The money was meant to cover K9 training for the Sheriff’s dog, but Zuehlke was not putting the dog through training, according to the board’s investigation.
The County Board directed the Sheriff to pay back the money with interest.
“We had checked in with the DCI, and they had said they weren’t going to take it up criminally, so then they just brought it back to us to make a decision on how we wanted to move forward, and we decided that would be the best course just to ask the Sheriff if he would repay that money,” Jarvis says.
Watch the broadcast story here:
The Board also addressed a recent incident with the County 911 Dispatch Center involving a delayed response to an active shooter threat at Wautoma High School in early October.
Wautoma Police Chief Paul Mott says a social worker called the dispatch center, telling them a student was making homicidal threats and that the student's family's guns were missing.
Mott says the dispatch center told the social worker to reach out to the school resource officer.
The social worker could not get a hold of the officer, so they called 911 again.
Mott, who was off duty at the time, says it wasn’t until he called the Sheriff’s Office directly, did they send deputies to the scene.
“For a few minutes, I was very emotional, I was in another county, and I started responding back to this area,” Mott says. “We’re a small town. I know most of these kids by name.”
The County Board asked Mott to speak at the meeting on Tuesday. Mott suggested additional dispatch training and creation of a 911 dispatch board.
“To kind of oversee and review the rules where fire, police and EMS can make recommendations so when we have these problems in the future they can be addressed before an incident like this,” Mott says.
Sam Wood is a resident of Waushara County and has been posting updates to his Facebook page regarding the Sheriff’s Office.
Wood says after he began posting to social media, 20 victims of sexual harassment reached out to him with allegations against the Sheriff’s Office.
“It opened up the flood gates,” Wood says. “Thank God I had Chief Mott, who stepped in and helped these women get advocates.”
Wood obtained public records from internal investigations at the Sheriff’s Office, detailing several sexual harassment allegations against deputies.
One of the incidents in the report involves a deputy asking to see graphic photos of a minor. The photos were being used in a criminal investigation.
The records say the deputies described the incidents as “jokes,” and no action was taken.
However, Deputy Matthew Elliott, who is referenced several times in the reports, later resigned.
Mott says he is writing a report for the DOJ regarding at least 10 sexual harassment allegations, though he declined to comment on the investigation.
“I think first, everyone needs to be supported over there,” Mott says. “I’ve been tasked with doing some of the investigations into what’s going on over there, which I can’t comment on right now, and hopefully with those investigations ongoing ant the DOJ eventually taking over we’ll see the change and support that the people over there need.”
Both Wood and Mott say the action taken by the County Board is a step in the right direction.
“Keep in mind that the majority of us are here to do our job, to help people, we love our community, and we want things to get better,” Mott says.
“It’s a very good county, good people,” Jarvis says. “Hopefully we can get through this and move on.”
