An investigation into Officer Jadon Stone’s conduct concluded the accusations were “credible,” but the Hayward Police chief “found nothing to disqualify him.”

By Annie Pulley, THE BADGER PROJECT

An officer for the UW-Superior Police Department resigned after being investigated for sending “inappropriate and unwanted text messages” to female student employees. He now works for the Hayward Police Department, about an hour south of the university.

Officer Jadon Stone left the university’s police department in August 2024, two months after the Dean of Students Office received a formal complaint alleging his conduct violated the school’s sexual harassment, hostile environment, stalking and consensual relationship policies.

Stone began working for the UW-Superior Police Department in 2020. In the wake of the investigation, the department flagged him as a “negative separation” in a statewide database maintained by the Wisconsin Department of Justice, meaning he was fired or forced out for misconduct or poor performance. The university police department marked Stone as “resigning in lieu of termination” in the database.

“This decision has not come lightly,” Stone wrote in his resignation letter. “Recent developments have made it clear that stepping down is necessary for my well-being and that of my family. The ongoing investigation and its associated stress have placed an immense strain on both my personal life and professional responsibilities. The impact on my family has been particularly challenging, affecting our overall stability and well-being.”

The letter also includes his gratitude to the UW-Superior Police Department for the opportunities and support he received during his four years there.

His current boss, Hayward Police Chief Marshal Savitski, told The Badger Project in an email that he completed a background check before hiring Stone.

“I was aware of a policy violation and that there was nothing criminal,” Savitski wrote. “Since there were no criminal violations, we found nothing to disqualify him as a candidate.”

In August 2023, a year before Stone resigned, a female student employee reported receiving messages from Stone, according to the investigation documents The Badger Project obtained in a records request. At the time, the complaint resulted in a conversation between the student employee, Stone, the university’s dean of students, and UW-Superior Police Chief Joe Eickman.

“Additionally,” the document reads, “Police Chief Eickman addressed this inappropriate conduct with Officer Stone in a separate conversation.”

Eickman declined to answer emailed questions from The Badger Project asking whether Stone was disciplined in the year between the 2023 complaint and the human resources investigation that began in 2024.

A university employee tasked with enforcing Title IX, federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in education programs, conducted the initial interviews with the person who made the 2023 complaint and deemed it didn’t “meet the definition of Title IX,” handing it off to UW-Superior’s human resources department.

In July 2024, human resources employees with the university interviewed the student employee who made the 2023 complaint, according to the investigation. She said she knew of two other student employees who had similar concerns about Stone. The woman making the complaint noted a student employee who said Stone interacted with her on social media. The nature of those interactions aren’t disclosed in the documents, but the investigation relays that it made the student feel “uncomfortable,” so she blocked him from her social media accounts.

The complaint also references concerns from a student employee who received reports of similar “unwanted conduct” from Stone that he directed toward two student softball players.

When asked about one such interaction, Stone agreed that one of his text message exchanges could have been easily perceived as sexual even if Stone had no intention of engaging in sexual acts with the female student he was texting.

The investigators determined the information in the complaint was “credible.”

The human resources probe also concluded Stone used police department systems to look up female student’s information regularly. He also emailed six female students reminding them they could take advantage of the police department’s ride-along opportunities.

“When questioned, Officer Stone indicated that it was probably because they were attractive,” the investigation document reads. “Due to the pattern of behavior identified through this investigation, we conclude Officer Stone’s behaviors directly contradict” university policy.

Savitski, the Hayward Police Chief, also hired Matthew Frey, a veteran of the Cumberland Police Department who was forced out amid an investigation that cited dozens of professionalism complaints, according to reporting from The Badger Project in September 2025. Frey, like Stone, was flagged by his previous law enforcement agency as a “negative separation,” noting he “resigned in lieu of termination.”

The Hayward Police Department employs eight full-time officers and several part-time officers and has no openings at the moment, Savitski wrote in an email to The Badger Project.

Police chiefs and county sheriffs in Wisconsin regularly say it’s hard to find good candidates for openings. The total number of law enforcement officers in Wisconsin has trended down for years as the profession becomes less popular with younger generations. Meanwhile, the total number of “wandering officers,” cops who get fired or forced out from one law enforcement agency only to find work at another, has increased in Wisconsin, according to investigations by The Badger Project.

Research suggests that these wandering officers are more likely than other cops to commit misconduct again.

The Badger Project is an independent, reader-supported news nonprofit in Wisconsin.