ELECTION 2022: Lenzner relies on experience in sheriff’s race

George Lenzner has served the Shawano County Sheriff’s Department for 34 years, rising through the ranks to become chief deputy under Sheriff Adam Bieber in the last seven years.

Now, Lenzner wants to be the next sheriff after Bieber opted not to run for a third four-year term. His only barrier to achieving that goal is an Aug. 9 primary race against Brad Olsen, a Shawano County resident who serves as Oconto Falls’ police chief.

In high school, Lenzner learned that the sheriff’s department had an explorer post for teens to learn about the various aspects of law enforcement.

“I was always interested in law enforcement,” Lenzner said. “I had a cousin who was in law enforcement at the time at the city police department, Gary Burr. I joined this explorer’s post at the sheriff’s office and got to learn a lot there. There was a lot of hands-on stuff at the time.”

Before going into the police field for a career, Lenzner served in the U.S. Air Force for four years, simultaneously going through the police academy at the time. He said his main goal while in the Air Force, once he finished his commitment, was to return to Shawano and protect the community, and he did just that in 1988 — serving under five sheriffs since that time.

In his tenure with the department, a lot of changes have come to law enforcement, and Lenzner said he has pushed for most of those changes when they came.

“Technology is the biggest thing,” he said. “When I started, you started in the jail, and everything at the time was keys and levers. There were no electronics where you pushed a button to open a door. I spent two years at the jail, and then I went to dispatch, but I probably couldn’t do that. At the time, it was just a phone, pen and paper, and you wrote everything down. The only time you typed was to type a license plate and name to run it through the system. Now it’s become so advanced through the years, we have civilian dispatchers that can type 100 words a minute.”

Citations used to be written by hand, Lenzner noted, but now deputies have computers in their vehicles to type them up and print them out. He said those computers have also made it easier to dispatch deputies to calls, input accident reports and more.

Another key piece of technology were body and squad cameras, which help to show concrete evidence of criminal activity in an officer’s presence. Lenzner noted that the days where courts took the word of deputies simply because they were law enforcement are long gone.

“I actually had the first video camera (for the department),” he said. “I talked to the sheriff at the time to let me try one of them in my squad because I worked patrol at night. It worked so good for accidents, drunk driving, speeding tickets.”

Lenzner was one of the driving forces in 2021 when the sheriff’s department reached a critical state with employees leaving the jail or patrol not only to work for other police agencies offering more money but also to take on higher-paying jobs with factories or other parts of the private sector. He helped to craft the plan that used American Rescue Plan Act funds to give raises for the next few years. If elected sheriff, he’ll need to develop a plan to continue that pay raise once the ARPA funds run out in 2024.

“The non-union employees have been hurting for the last six years,” Lenzner said. “Of course, it’s not just corrections and dispatch. It’s countywide.”

Lenzner said the long-term solution would be to update the Carlson Dettman pay scale, which was first approved in 2015.

“We have to make sure they keep that $3 an hour raise (received in 2021),” he said, noting that the county is looking at a 6% pay increase for all county employees this year. “The only way to help them is to raise them to a higher grade on the pay scale.”

Lenzner noted that the county’s law enforcement is better equipped than many surrounding agencies, and he hopes to continue to make sure deputies have the technology and other tools needed to do their jobs. He also hopes to strengthen the county’s new drug task force and make sure there is continued open communication with the community.

Lenzner said that like Olsen, his competitor, he would also like to see an additional school resource officer position in place. He noted, however, that will not be an easy task — pointing out that it can cost the county up to $150,000 for a new position when salary, benefits and all the necessary modern equipment are included.

“I’d love to get more officers in the schools, but until there’s a solution, we have to have real good communication with our superintendents and principals,” Lenzner said, noting the Stockbridge-Munsee Police Department helps with serving Bowler and Gresham schools.

Another key goal for Lenzner if elected sheriff is to put more funding into mental health. He noted that the system is overtaxed, and often jails become the de facto resource for inmates who need help in order to safely reintegrate into society.

“If you look around the state, mental health is going down with facilities shutting down,” Lenzner said. “The state of Wisconsin needs to step that up.”

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com