Police arrested a “highly intoxicated” Brent Wilmot after he fled the altercation in 2021. A superior says the department gave him a second chance in 2024 and he has become one of their “better deputies.”

By Peter Cameron, THE BADGER PROJECT

A Vilas County deputy who resigned after he was arrested for a drunken scuffle is back working as a law enforcement officer for that sheriff’s department.

Brent Wilmot resigned from his position as a deputy sheriff in 2021 after the altercation outside a Rhinelander bar.

He worked in the private sector for a while, then returned to take a lower-level and lower-paid position as a jail officer in January of 2024, said Patrick Schmidt, chief deputy for the Vilas County Sheriff’s Office.

Wilmot, now 38, worked his way up and has since been promoted back to patrol deputy, Schmidt said.

“He is not a wandering officer,” the chief deputy said. “We knew the history behind him.”

Wilmot’s first stint with the Vilas County Sheriff’s Office started in 2014 and ended in 2021 after his arrest.

A witness told responding officers that Wilmot had been arguing with other patrons in the bar in Rhinelander in neighboring Oneida County. He then shoved another man outside, causing him to fall into the street.

When a deputy approached with his emergency lights activated, the crowd around the altercation scattered, according to the police report. One witness told investigators that Wilmot ran into the alley.

Officers searched for Wilmot at other bars in the city, eventually finding him in one. They described him as “heavily intoxicated” and arrested him.

Wilmot refused to submit to a breath test at the jail, the report said.

He was not charged criminally, but did receive a citation for disorderly conduct, according to the report from Rhinelander Police.

Now he is the one writing tickets and making arrests again.

If someone proves they can move on from past mistakes, we will offer them a second chance, Schmidt said.

“I would say he is one of our better deputies,” Schmidt said. “He’s definitely learned from his experience.”

Number of wandering officers in Wisconsin continues to rise, while total number of officers statewide sits near-record low

The total number of law enforcement officers in Wisconsin has dropped for years and now sits at a near-record low, according to stats from the state DOJ, as chiefs and sheriffs say they struggle to fill positions in an industry less attractive to people than it once was.

Schmidt said that while hiring is also harder than it used to be for the Vilas County Sheriff’s Office, they are fully staffed at the moment.

Statewide, the number of wandering officers, those who were fired or forced out from a previous job in law enforcement, continues to rise. Nearly 400 officers in Wisconsin currently employed were fired or forced out of previous jobs in law enforcement in the state, almost double the amount from 2021. And that doesn’t include officers who were pushed out of law enforcement jobs outside of the state that came to Wisconsin to work.

Chiefs and sheriffs can be incentivized to hire wandering officers, experts say. Hiring someone new to law enforcement means the police department or sheriff’s office has to pay thousands of dollars for that recruit’s academy training, and then wait for them to finish before they are fully available to work.

A wandering officer already has their certification and can start working immediately.

Nearly 2,400 officers in the state have been flagged by their former law enforcement employers as having a “negative separation” since the state DOJ launched its database in 2017.

Most are simply young officers who did not succeed in a new job during their probationary period, when the bar to fire them is very low, experts say. But some have more serious reasons for being pushed out.

Law enforcement agencies can look up job applicants in that database to get more insight into their work history. And a law enacted in 2021 in Wisconsin bans law enforcement officers from sealing their personnel files and work histories, a previously common tactic for officers with a black mark on their record.

About 13,400 law enforcement officers are currently employed in Wisconsin, excluding those who primarily work in a corrections facility, according to the state DOJ. Wandering officers make up nearly 3 percent of the total.

At least one major study published in the Yale Law Journal has found that wandering officers are more likely to receive a complaint for a moral character violation, compared to new officers and veterans who haven’t been fired or forced out from a previous position in law enforcement.

Sammie Garrity contributed to this report.

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