Officers in the Manitowoc Police Department are ready to step up to take a role.
Police Chief Nick Reimer explains to Seehafernews.com that while the department will be looking younger after five officers in prominent roles retired.
But with proper training, the next batch of young officers are ready to serve where they’re needed.
As we reported recently, Lt. Cooper Schmidt is taking over as Captain of Detectives after the retirement of Pete McGinty.
“He came from second shift, was a lieutenant there, does and excellent job,” he explained. “We feel like he is one of those motivated individuals that’s ready to take over our detective bureau and be in charge of the most complex cases which is one of the most important positions we have at the police department.”
Reimer says he and other officers are part of succession planning that the department has.
“We can kind of have a few different people in each position that are ready to get promoted,” he noted. “And then obviously we have a promotional process which ends up leading to one person that gets the position.”
The Manitowoc Police Chief says as time goes by you can never really replace experience, especially with some officers like McGinty or Detective Dave McCue, who retired at the beginning of the year.
But Reimer says with younger officers getting the proper training and being promoted, you must let them gain experience.
“Everybody has to do something for the first time,” he stated. “So, whether that be handle a traffic stop or handle a homicide. Somebody has to do that for the first time in order to gain experience. So, we hope that we have other people here that would help those people along as well as the training, and different supervisors that can help.”
The next retirement in the Manitowoc Police Department is Assistant Police Chief Jason Freiboth.
Reimer says the department will start with a succession plan to see who will be moving up in that role.
MPD is also doing good with hiring new patrol officers ready to patrol the streets as well.
