‘Happened all at once’: City operating without police department after all officers leave at same time

ARCADIA, Wis. (WEAU/Gray News) – A city in Wisconsin is now running without a police department after all its officers left their roles in the last few weeks.

It happened in Arcadia, a city in Trempealeau County. According to census data, the population was just over 3,700 in 2020.

The Trempealeau County Sheriff’s Office said the lack of police department is now putting a strain on the sheriff’s office.

Trempealeau County Sheriff Brett Semingson said the police department is left without any officers except for an interim police chief.

But it wasn’t one single event that led to a mass exodus of all the officers quitting. Instead, they all just happened to either leave the force or find other positions at other departments around the same time.

Semingson said Arcadia isn’t the only city facing this type of problem.

“It’s not just unique to Arcadia, a lot of smaller agencies or law enforcement in general across the board are struggling to keep their employees or find new employees,” Semingson said.

Arcadia’s mayor, John Kimmel, agrees.

In a statement to WEAU, he said, in part:

“Many departments face staffing shortages or other issues, ours just happened all at once. Our situation in Arcadia is unique in that our former officers moved on to new careers in a relatively short time frame, which has presented us with both a challenge and an opportunity.”

Kimmel said on the bright side, this gives the city an opportunity to build a new department from the ground up. But while that happens, calls for help fall on the sheriff’s office.

“It puts a lot of strain on my deputies because of the additional calls they’re taking, plus the normal routine that they handle here in the county,” Semingson said.

The sheriff’s office is in Whitehall, which presents another challenge. Depending on the location of the call from Arcadia, it could take deputies 20 to 30 minutes to get there.

“Some of these calls are going to be serious within the City of Arcadia and require rapid response times,” Semingson said. “As a sheriff’s office with the same staffing going on, we’re going to have longer response times to get to those emergencies.”

But whether it takes five minutes or 30, Semingson said the sheriff’s office will get there when they can, ready to protect and serve.

Kimmel confirmed to WEAU that the city has hired Nic Scholl as Arcadia’s new chief of police as the first step in rebuilding the department. The city will then work with Scholl to fill the remaining positions.

“On behalf of the City of Arcadia, I wish to assure our community , our businesses and our guests that we are working to rebuild and to staff our municipal police department,” Kimmel said in a statement. “We are eager to have a fully staffed and responsive department that is committed to meeting the safety needs of our community.”

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