August 10, 2018 at 3:38 p.m.
Hartman says experience is key in sheriff's race
Sheriff says transparency in agency will continue to improve
Hartman says experience is key in sheriff's race
Hartman is running against deputy Greg Gardner and county medical examiner Larry Mathein in the Aug. 14 Republican primary for sheriff.
"I am the best candidate for the job based on law enforcement experience," Hartman told The Lakeland Times in an interview. "We deal with complex issues regularly. Without a basis of knowledge, without having done those kinds of jobs, without having made arrests, without having booked people in the jail and been around prisoner transports and court security, it's going to be a very difficult job to pick up and be successful at."
What's more, Hartman says, he has about 24 years of law enforcement experience - six years as sheriff plus experience running the jail and the dispatch center and experience on the road.
"I was active on the road as a patrol sergeant and I was a SWAT team leader," he says. "I'm very familiar with all the issues surrounding the sheriff's office."
Hartman says there are a number of major projects that he would like to see through to successful completion, the biggest being the implementation of next generation 911.
"That's a state-wide system," he says. "It's going from the old copper phone lines to a computer-based system where people would be able to text right to our dispatchers, send pictures, and videos right to the dispatch center without ever calling. The amount of infrastructure and preparation needed before implementation is an incredible amount of work and I am looking forward to seeing that through to success."
Hartman says it is incredibly important to get it right.
"The new system has to work right away," he says. "You can't lose a second. You could lose a life."
Hartman also says he wants to continue to work to combat the county's drug problems.
"We were a heroin county for a short period of time," he says. "We've switched to meth. We have a big meth problem and we are working hard to combat that and I would like to continue that challenge. It's a big challenge. It's one that you can't necessarily win but you can keep a lid on."
The skills of a sheriff
Hartman says the most important skill a sheriff can have is the ability to listen and compromise.
"It can't always be my way," he says. "There are a lot of leaders within the department that get a say and oftentimes their ideas are better than my own ideas. So the ability to discern what the good ideas are from the not-good ideas and the courage to implement those are important."
Hartman also says being able to look at the big picture and at what is in the best interest of the county and not just of the sheriff's department is critical.
"The county board has a big say in the office and in the budget especially," he says. "I've worked well with them, often pushing capital improvement projects back for other departments and for the good of the interests of the county. I try to come in with an open mind and say, 'well, we should do this radio project this year but I think if we can push it off for a year or two we won't have any major issues, if it is for the betterment of the community."
Hartma says he looks for a leadership team that will be well-suited to those big-picture tasks.
"I like to promote the people who are working the hardest, who aren't afraid to make some changes and to think outside the box," he says. "Sometimes we get stuck in the way we've done things forever and it's often the person who has the fresh idea that we haven't thought of who is promoted. I really like to reward those who come in and give an honest day's work for their pay."
Hartman says his biggest accomplishment so far has been working out a deal with the state to get state inmates, which has given the county financial stability.
"That allowed me to cut our budget roughly 15 percent by turning $1.5 million back in profit from the state inmates," he says.
Cracking the Mendez murder case is a close second, Hartman says.
"That was huge," he says. "That we were able to take a giant risk to bring in some outsiders and have them take a fresh look and to have gotten the success we did was huge for our community."
But there areas that can be improved, Hartman acknowledged, especially the agency's relationship with local media.
"We struggled early with our relationship with The Lakeland Times," he said. "After that, we have made an effort, and we are continuing that effort to improve that. I got failed on open records and I have worked hard and gotten that up to a B-plus. And that will be an A going forward, that's the goal. And I have been aggressive on some of the open records issues, with the Drivers Privacy Protection Act."
Though insurance companies advised after a court decision that agencies could not release unredacted accident reports, Hartman said he continued to do so.
"I said no to the insurance people," he says. "I said, 'I'm the records keeper and we are going to continue to keep giving that' and I think I was one of the only ones doing that. So recommitting to a good relationship with the newspaper is something that needs to be improved."
The biggest change
Hartman says there have been a lot of changes since he became sheriff, but the biggest in his mind is the change in the way deputies are hired.
"I was able to convince the civil service commission to change the deputy hiring process," he said. "The old way, civil service would do their interviews first and they would rank them, and if one job was open they would give us the top three names and we would interview those three and oftentimes we weren't on the same page with civil service."
The process was cumbersome and took a lot of time, Hartman says.
"Some of them would fail background checks," he said. " ... It was chaos and people down the list were getting hired quicker by other agencies and so they weren't available to us. You know and I know that we are competing for good labor."
Now, Hartman says, the sheriff's department gets first dibs in assessing candidates.
"That assesment center is 6 to 8 hours," he says. "But over that time their real personality traits start to come through. We've seen some real red flags. So we get to rank them and then civil service does their interviews and they rank them. We get to get together behind closed doors and compare and discuss, and it allows us to quickly hire the top candidates."
Hartman says the new process is working well.
"It's been fascinating because - we have done it three or four times now - and now we're getting on the same page," he says. "This time there was very little debating."
Morale and turn over
Hartman has been criticized by some who say morale in the department is low and turnover is high, but the sheriff rejects the charge.
"Yes, we had to do internal investigations and part ways with some employees, but that appears to have stabilized," he says. "And we continue to have some people leave - I just had another resignation, a corrections officer who had personal issues and needed to move closer to Langlade County, and Langlade County offered her a job and is paying her $1.50 an hour more."
The turnover that occurs is due in part to a more competitive environment, Hartman says.
"We are competing for labor," he says. "Act 10 changed a lot of that. You can cherry pick, and other departments have done that. We also cherry pick. We took a Minocqua police officer."
But overall, Hartman says, the agency is doing pretty good at having jobs filled.
"We have two or theee openings right now," he says. "I had a stretch last year where some employees left to go to the private sector."
So turnover is driven in large part by economics, and Hartman says morale is good.
"I would say that the majority of our employees are happy," he said. "Not everybody is happy, I'll admit to that, but the majority are and I believe that if you polled the employees privately, they would agree with that."
Fiscal issues
When it comes to the agency's budget, Hartman says he has some concerns., the biggest being next generation 911 costs.
"I'm not convinced that our staffing levels currently will be able to handle that," he says. "We're going to look at that and see what we need to accomplish that. It's a little bit frustrating that the state took that surcharge on your phone bill, that 75 cents, that was supposed to be for these upgrades. That money is gone. It went to balance the state budget and now there is no money left for this upgrade."
The state assessed a 75-cents surcharge for police and fire protection but that money was diverted. Hartman says he is not sure how the state will handle that funding issue, but he knows one thing:
"I certainly don't think that local taxpayers should have to cover that difference," he says. "The state should pony up."
Hartman said squad cameras are getting to the point of needing to be replaced, and he says that has sparked an internal discussion.
"So we have been talking about whether we want to go to - and I don't know if it's even possible - if we could go to a body camera and then use that within the squad somehow," he says. "I think we'd be more versatile. We'd get more camera coverage and hopefully the cost would be about what we are expecting for the squads, but I'm not sure that that's possible. We've just been talking about it."
Body cameras can protect both citizens and police officers, Hartman says.
"The key issue around it, though, the storage is massively expensive on the data, hundreds of thousands of dollars for just what our department would probably cost," he says. "Then dealing with the open records/court issues surrounding that."
Sometimes some of the video footage has to be redacted, Hartman said.
"The software to do the redactions hasn't been good, so far, and it has caused me to drag my feet on that a little bit because to redact some of that stuff you have to go frame by frame," he says. "Say you have to blur a juvenile's face out or something, frame by frame, and, if you are shooting at 360 frames a second, over a 10-minute video that's a lot of work for a technical support person."
That could create the need for another staff person to do that, the sheriff said.
"I'm not looking to add staff because the county budget is what it is, but I thought maybe we could do the body cameras instead of the squad cameras, maybe it would be kind of a wash," he says. "That was my hope."
Overall, though, Hartman says staffing is adequate and there are enough officers on the street.
"I think our numbers are right," he says. "When you look at our population versus the number of officers we have, I think we are right about average. That's where we should be. We want to provide a good service and have enough people to do that."
That good service includes some of the lesser property crimes, Hartman said, because those are quality of life issues in the Northwoods.
"We don't want your pink flamingos being stolen, and if we can solve that we are going to because maybe it nips the bigger crimes if you hit the smaller crimes," he says. "Right now we're doing OK."
That said, Hartman says the profession has changed in the last five years.
"The guys and gals on the road and in the jail are much busier than they were five years ago," he says. "It's just the feel. There is more stuff going on. The community is demanding more from us with different events that they want us to come to and staff. We need to work those logistics out."
In addition, Hartman says, the state continues to require more and more from corrections staff.
"I was thankful that when we got the state inmates that the county board allowed me to hire one more corrections officer to put us where we were," he said. "We cut a position to balance the budget before that but they allowed me to have it back as long as we have the state inmates. If we lose the state inmates, we have to relook at that position and likely lose that on attrition."
Biggest crime problem
Hartman says the county's biggest crime problem is methamphetamines.
"It's not even close and it's all this stuff that goes with it," he says. "You have kids in houses where the parents are addicted, so you have foster care issues. Social services doesn't have enough foster homes to deal with that."
There are medical issues, too, the sheriff says.
"We are required to give medical care to the inmates when they come to the jail," he says. "Well, your typical meth addicted person doesn't seek doctor care on their own until they get to the jail. We start to detox them and we come across medical issues and state law requires us to deal with that. That's expensive. It stresses the budget."
Hartman says he is constantly trying to save taxpayers money and the secret to that is to come up with innovative ideas.
"We just changed our visitation from the normal 'come in and talk between the glass thing' to video visitation," he says. "The video visitation allows emails, electronic messages, and the video back and forth. We set some kiosks up in the lobby so if a relative wants to come in they can do it for free. I thought that was important that that continue."
But if someone from Milwaukee or out of town wants to visit their loved one in the jail, Hartman says they can also dial it up on their phone or laptop and then they pay a fee to use it.
"But that fee is going to be less than driving here," he says. "But we get money out of that deal, about $50,000 since we implemented that. That was not budgeted money but the next year we'll put that in the budget. And that's another way the state inmates help us because there are more prisoners using that service."
Hartman also says he has scoured all of the agency's outside contracts, such as that for the commissary, and have squeezed as much as he could out of them.
"I switched the jail food contract to another company," he says. "We weren't completely happy with the old one. We were able to get with a different company and cut the cost, too."
Political issues
When it comes to school safety, Hartman says having conversations about safety is vitally important. He thinks recent state grants to help fund security upgrades in schools is a positive thing.
But he also says local communities and school boards should be empowered to make their own security decisions.
"Some have talked about arming teachers," he says. "I don't know if that is the answer or not, but I believe that should be decided at the local level. Madison should not be dictating what we're doing up here. Our school board should decide that and have the authority to decide that."
The sheriff says he is having officers trained in doing threat assessments so they can provide that service to schools and businesses and make suggestions about what can be done immediately to increase security.
For the most part, Hartman says he supports concealed carry without a permit or training requirement: "I'm all for good law-abiding citizens carrying guns if they so choose," he says.
He is against legalizing marijuana.
"I think it opens the door for other crimes," he says. "Plus, I read a study from Colorado. In Wisconsin, our usage rate (for marijuana) from age 12-17 is 12 percent, but in Colorado it's right around 35 percent. Those brains are just developing and I just don't think that's a good thing."
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