Andrew Straszkowski resigned from the Lake Hallie Police Department on the day of a hearing regarding his use of force and insubordination. He’s now working at another police department in the county.

By Annie Pulley, THE BADGER PROJECT

A few months after being suspended for unlawfully arresting a man, Andrew Straskowski, a six-year veteran of the Lake Hallie Police Department, resigned amid an investigation accusing him of another bad arrest, a failure to document his use of force, insubordination and unbecoming conduct. He is now a full-time patrol officer in Stanley, a city 30 miles east.

Straszkowski left prior to the completion of an internal investigation in March 2024, according to a state Department of Justice database that tracks negative separations in law enforcement. He resigned the same day his department scheduled his disciplinary meeting.

The same DOJ database says Straszkowski began working for the Stanley Police Department in October 2024. He currently makes $31 an hour and earned a nearly identical wage at the Lake Hallie Police Department, according to his former police chief. 

In December 2023, Straszkowski was suspended without pay from the Lake Hallie Police Department for an unlawful arrest. The suspension also barred him from acting as a field training officer for two years. 

He and another officer he was training conducted a traffic stop on a truck with an expired registration. The truck’s passenger refused to obey Straszkowski, who asked him not to light a cigarette because they were near gas pumps, according to the incident report. The passenger said it wasn’t illegal. Straszkowski went to his squad car and returned to the truck a few moments later, seeing that the passenger had lit a cigarette. Straszkowski requested his ID.

“The passenger was refusing to identify himself or extinguish his cigarette,” Straszkowski wrote in his incident report. “I then asked him to exit from the truck, and he refused.”

Straszkowski, with help from the other officer, removed the passenger from the truck, handcuffed him and put him in his squad car.

He released the man soon after, writing in his report that he couldn’t find the applicable state law that prohibited smoking near gas stations. The Lake Hallie Village Police Department said in the suspension letter that the arrest violated its abuse of authority policy. 

Fire code prohibits open flames within 20 feet of a gas pump. But the Lake Hallie Police Department doesn’t enforce the fire code, according to the investigation documents.  

“The cigarette on its own is not a violation of the fire code,” the investigation read. “Officer Straszkowski had no legal authority to remove (the passenger) from the vehicle and detain and search his person. This is a clear 4th amendment violation.” 

Straszkowski was again disciplined in February 2024 after he wrongfully arrested a man who drove behind his squad car “at an unreasonable distance,” according to the department’s investigation. After pulling him over, Straszkowski learned the driver had a revoked driving status and handcuffed him. He released the driver after he realized the infraction was civil and not criminal, according to another officer present at the traffic stop. Straszkowski then told the man he hadn’t been arrested, only detained. Straszkowski did not document that he put the driver in handcuffs.

Back at the police station, another officer told “Straskowski that our department does not take drivers into custody for operating after revocation at all and questioned why he would handcuff the subject had it been civil or criminal,” a report reads. The officer said Straszkowski “became upset and stated, ‘F— this place!’ and left the office.”

In the same February report, the department said Straszkowski violated its insubordination policy when he sent an email to a superior with an instruction to notify him about report corrections through email instead of a different service. The department also learned that staff at a local Kwik Trip had multiple issues with Straszkowski, saying he is rude and that they are “afraid to call in complaints at night as they fear Officer Straszkowski.” A store manager told a Lake Hallie police officer that their third shift calls Straszkowski “Officer Asshole.”

The Lake Hallie Police Department put Straszkowski on administrative leave for nine patrol shifts from February 26, 2024, to March 9. The department scheduled a disciplinary meeting on March 7, and Straszkowski submitted his resignation the same day.

Stanley Police Chief Lance Weiland, Straszkowski’s current boss, said in an email to The Badger Project that he spoke with Straszkowski and his former police chiefs and was aware of what motivated his resignation from the Lake Hallie Police Department. 

“Based on the totality of the information learned through the sources in which the details were gathered,” Weiland wrote, “an employment offer was made to Officer Straszkowski.” 

Straszkowski joined the Stanley Police Department in October 2024; the department employs six full-time and three part-time officers.

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