Paul Picciolo was a lieutenant with the Bayside Police Department. He resigned when he was investigated for complaints from a subordinate.

By Peter Cameron, THE BADGER PROJECT

The Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department hired a deputy a few months after he resigned from a police department where he was being investigated for harassment, according to documents The Badger Project obtained in an open records request.

While working for the Bayside Police Department in the Milwaukee suburbs, Paul Picciolo was accused in 2022 by a subordinate officer of harassment and unprofessionalism. The subordinate said Picciolo criticized the growing out of his afro, told the officer he “stinks,” and told him he thought he was selling drugs, according to the partially redacted documents.

Picciolo “categorically denies those allegations and the representation of those actions,” said Inspector James Gumm, the second in command of the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department.

The sheriff’s department was aware of the accusations and completed a background check before hiring him, Gumm said.

Picciolo has been a “great employee,” Gumm added, noting he successfully completed his 12-month probationary period.

Picciolo worked at the Bayside Police Department for more than ten years before he quit in March 2022.

In February of 2022, the subordinate officer submitted two written complaints to the chief. The officer’s name is redacted from the documents The Badger Project obtained in the records request.

Picciolo said the accusing officer “stinks” and made him “gag” after getting in a squad car the officer had been driving, according to the complaints.

The officer also claimed that when he entered the police station on a subzero January day wearing a “balaclava-style hat,” Picciolo told him he looked “liked you want to kill someone.”

And the officer reported that Picciolo told him he looked like he was selling drugs, considering the officer had recently purchased a new Corvette, truck and house. The officer wrote in his complaint that he had worked “numerous hours of overtime” in the previous year.

After the filing of the complaints, the chief informed Picciolo by letter that he was being investigated. Picciolo resigned a few weeks later.

The chief of Bayside Police Department at the time, Douglas Larsson, sent an email reminding staff that Picciolo “resigned in good standing,” and that employees are not allowed to give opinions for any “pre-employment background investigations.”

“That’s the same recommendation the chief gave to us when we did our background,” Gumm said.

But the Bayside Police Department reported Picciolo to the Wisconsin Department of Justice as a “negative separation” for resigning prior to the completion of an internal investigation.

The state DOJ maintains a database of all officers in the state who are negatively separated from a law enforcement agency, either through termination for cause or resignation in lieu of termination or prior to the completion of an investigation. Other law enforcement agencies can consult the database before hiring officers. 

Picciolo resigned in March of 2022, and Larsson retired a few months later in July.

The Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department hired Picciolo in July of 2022.

That department employs at least 14 officers who were negatively separated from another law enforcement agency, one of the highest numbers of wandering officers in the state. In 2021, the department employed only four officers classified as having been negatively separated from previous jobs in law enforcement.

The Waukesha County Sheriff’s Department has not reduced its hiring standards, said James Gumm, an inspector with the department, “however, we face the same employment challenges that all law enforcement agencies are facing in our current environment.”

The total number of officers in the state continues to drop to new lows as law enforcement agencies struggle to find good candidates.

Many officers on the state’s negative separation list were novices unable to complete training programs with a previous law enforcement agency, but found success elsewhere, “which is very common in law enforcement,” Gumm said.

In 2021, the Wisconsin State Legislature passed a bill intended to cut down on bad apples in law enforcement.

The law requires law enforcement agencies maintain a work history file for each employee and creates a procedure for law enforcement agencies, jails, and juvenile detention facilities to receive and review an officer candidate’s file from previous employers.

The goal is to avoid the sealing of problem officers’ personnel files. In the past, some law enforcement officers accused of misconduct would agree to leave an agency quietly if the bosses refused to tell other agencies what led to the separation. The law aims to end that practice and improve transparency in law enforcement hiring.

The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.

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