War’s end
In 2018, The Record-Review published a fourpart investigative report arguing that Marathon County’s “war on drugs” could not be sustained, given fiscal realities.
When we wrote the report, Marathon County was among the top 10 toughest counties in Wisconsin on drugs and, largely as a result of using drug dogs, saw a nearly 300 percent increase in drug arrests between 2012 and 2016. With this large increase in arrests, the county not only filled its own Wausau jail, but started hauling prisoners to jails in seven other counties. Sheriff Scott Parks tentatively supported building a new 600-bed jail. His chief corrections officer Sandra LaDu said a 1,000-bed jail was, perhaps, more appropriate.
The cost of a new jail was nothing short of enormous, requiring up to a 24 percent increase in average property taxes.
We said none of this was politically possible. The only way for the county to get the money for a jail expansion was to have a jail referendum. This was a political loser. Rural voters in the county would likely not vote for a jail meant to solve Wausau’s crime problem. Wausau voters, in turn, would likely not approve a referendum that would move the jail out of downtown Wausau to a campus outside its city borders.
Looking at the whole situation, we said the county’s “war on drugs” could not continue. The war, we said, was over.
It turns out that not only were we right but that law enforcement has since taken this message to heart.
A look at Wisconsin Department of Justice data shows that county law enforcement, faced with budget constraints and jail overcrowding, has backed off on all arrests, including drug arrests. In 2016, all county law enforcement agencies arrested 6,459 people, including 943 for drug crimes. By 2020, the agencies arrested only 3,787 people, including 526 for drug offenses.
The fewer drug arrests did not follow any signifi cant lack of drug use. Opioid hospitalizations and deaths in Marathon County stayed fairly constant between 2016 and 2020.
What’s happened is that law enforcement, elected municipal and county boards have realized police alone cannot end the scourge of drugs and, while drug interdiction remains a priority, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to close parks, libraries and aid to at-risk families in order to pay to arrest and jail more people with substance issues, many who have underlying mental illness.
A county 2022 budget message submitted this past week by administrator Lance Leonhard embraces this new understanding. It crows about the numerous programs the county has started to keep offenders out of jail (drug recovery court, Crisis Assessment Response Team, Crisis Intervention Program, Hot Sheet Tracking, arrest PROXY tool, active warrant “cleanup”) and, to force further initiatives, proposes to limit out of county jail placements to 50. Crucially, Sheriff Parks, a veteran drug warrior who dressed up as a hippie in the 1980’s in order to catch drug dealers, supports the administrator in putting in place this jail bed cap.
This part of the budget message demonstrates a more mature, fiscally realistic approach to the county’s ongoing problem with drugs.
On June 17, 1971, President Richard Nixon proposed a “new, all-out offensive” where he declared that drug abuse was “America’s Public Enemy Number One.” What followed was this country’s longest, 50-year war.
Here, in Marathon County, law enforcement has started to right-size its response to the drug problem, measuring its interdiction efforts against other county and municipal priorities. The county’s drug arrests are now similar to those in like-sized counties across the state.
The fight against illegal drugs will never stop, but, at least in this county, the war has ended.
Editorial by Peter Weinschenk, The Record-Review
