Marathon County sheriff introduces himself, shares department success stories

By Valorie Brecht Marathon County Sheriff Chad Billeb may have only been sheriff for a year and a half, but he’s been in law enforcement for more than 30 years and has plenty of stories to tell about the things he’s witnessed.

Billeb spoke to a group of about 15 people at the Marathon County Public Library – Spencer Branch on June 13, introducing himself to those who hadn’t met him yet, providing an update on sheriff’s office operations and answering any questions people might have.

Billeb’s background At the age of 17, Billeb was thinking about joining the military but decided he wanted to be in law enforcement instead after doing a ride-along with a police officer one night, which happened to involve a high-speed chase. Billeb’s family is from the Milwaukee/Fond Du Lac area, but his wife is from the Medford/Rib Lake area, which is how he ended up here. His time in law enforcement dates back to 1993, when he started with the Rib Lake Police Department. He later began working for the Medford Police Department. He worked as a corrections officer for the Price County Sheriff’s Department for six months while also working for Rib Lake and Medford. In July 1995, he was hired full-time with the Colby-Abbotsford Police Department, where he served for four and half years. He joined the Marathon County Sheriff’s Office in 1999 as a patrol deputy. In 2005, he became a narcotics investigator. In 2008, he was promoted to lieutenant and served in several roles, including working court security and doing patrol. He later became commander of the division of administration and worked on grants and budgeting.

“I wasn’t overly excited, but the more I got into it, the more I saw how big that was and how it impacted the operation that we had,” said Billeb.

When Scott Parks became sheriff in 2013, he asked Billeb to be his chief deputy and Billeb agreed. Then when Parks decided to retire, Billeb decided to run for sheriff. He was elected sheriff in fall 2022 and assumed the position in January 2023.

Billeb enjoys helping people and likes working in a largely rural setting.

“I like the diversity that this county has. One day you can be sitting on the top of Rib Mountain, looking out north, especially in the fall. Being a county deputy in the fall is one of the coolest things. I get up to Hamburg or Knowlton, or Lake DuBay or the Big Eau Pleine, and it’s beautiful.

“To me, that was what drew me here and what makes it nice… Growing up in the Milwaukee area, I know. If you’re working for Milwaukee County or Racine County, you’re not getting this.”

Patrol areas One attendee asked how many sheriff’s deputies were on patrol on the weekends. Billeb said there was a minimum of five on duty on the weekend. On any day, there are between five and eight deputies patrolling the county. He said the sheriff’s office does not cover the villages and cities unless there is no one on duty at the time; for example, if Spencer had no one on duty from 3 to 7 a.m., Marathon County would field those calls and then transfer them over to the Spencer officer when he came on duty.

“So like today, we have a deputy assigned to 500 square miles. He has from Edgar to Abbotsford — Highway 13, and from Dorchester to Marshfield. So that’s your patrol area because you’re the west-end deputy.

“If we have six deputies working, we’ll have one northwest — so they’ll work that Abbotsford/Dorchester area over to Highway H, and then you’ll have another car southwest, and they’ll work the Spencer/Stratford area over to H. That’s if we have six cars.

“If we have eight cars those assignments would stay the same, and we’d just stack extra cars over in what we call the metro area, just because of I-39… This time of year, now that tourism is back up and running in the Northwoods, the volume of traffic that comes up I-39 on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday is incredible. So we have a lot of crashes, minor incidents on the interstate. So we’ll spend quite a bit of time there doing things.”

He said one change that had helped recently was Rib Mountain becoming a village and contracting services through the county, meaning there were officers dedicated just to Rib Mountain versus pulling resources from the rest of the county.

The Marathon County Sheriff’s Office has 36 road deputies that patrol the county. In addition, there are two recreational deputies who just handle ATVs and UTVs, boats and other recreational vehicles. One deputy, Jackie, is a mental health officer. Her therapy dog, Bodhi, just got trained and will be with her whenever she’s on duty.

Vehicle rotation Billeb shared how the sheriff’s office has been transitioning to renting its vehicles as opposed to purchasing them outright, and the advantages of that program.

The sheriff’s office has about 100 vehicles in its fleet, including the bomb truck, dive equipment, SWAT vehicles, boats, snowmobiles and ATVs, plus regular automobiles. He said some of the vehicles were racking up 180,000 to 200,000 miles, which was higher than the sheriff’s office would like to have for vehicles still on the road, especially because the vehicles get run hard and officers can’t afford to have a mechanical failure on the way to help someone in an emergency. At the same time, up until last year, the sheriff’s office was receiving $333,000 every year to buy cars, the same amount the office was receiving back in 2012 when Billeb was a lieutenant. Meanwhile, the cost of cars has increased dramatically.

Billeb said the sheriff’s office current model wasn’t sustainable, so he worked with the county administrator and deputy county administrator to come up with a different plan. The deputy administrator recommended renting vehicles, as he had seen done in Portage County when he worked there. Billeb and the county administrator agreed, and they decided to use Enterprise to manage their fleet. Enterprise has the sheriff’s office detectives and command team members typically drive sedans or SUVs, reliable family vehicles that will sell well. When the vehicle reaches around 30,000 miles, Enterprise sells the vehicle and puts the officer in another vehicle. They tend to run the deputies’ vehicles longer, up to around 100,000 to 120,000 miles, and then sell them in the southern U.S. or other rural areas.

“What we had been doing is taking a car with 200,000 miles on it and taking it to auction and getting maybe $1,000. They (Enterprise) try to do it where they maximize your return on investment and then they get you in something else, so your vehicle isn’t nickel and dime-ing you and costing you a ton of money.”

Currently the sheriff’s office is renting 13 or 14 deputy vehicles through Enterprise.

Success stories Billeb said although the sheriff’s office team has dealt with some really difficult and sad things, they also have accomplished some really great things that he was proud of. One such story involved sheriff’s office deputies rescuing a man who was abducted. Billeb prefaced the story by saying he wanted to “take all the political feelings out of it” and set those aside for a moment.

A couple of years ago, the Colby-Abbotsford Police Department received a report of a man who worked for Abbyland Foods and didn’t show up to work. His vehicle was in the parking lot, but he wasn’t there. Upon reviewing security camera footage, police discovered that this man was abducted at gunpoint in the Abbyland parking lot.

Right away, Marathon County Sheriff’s Office detectives came to assess the scene and began working with the FBI. Through phone pings, they were able to trace the man’s cell phone and found it in laying in the median by 72nd Avenue on Highway 29. Upon further investigation, the detectives eventually figured out the man had likely moved to Florida and was living in the Kissimmee area. A couple of detectives from Marathon County flew down there and worked with the FBI and the Kissimmee Police Department. With the assistance of those agencies, they were able to rescue the man.

“One of our detectives said they (the Kissimmee Police Department) couldn’t believe it. They’ve never recovered one alive,” said Billeb.

The victim was an illegal immigrant. The abductor had smuggled the victim across the border, and the victim hadn’t paid him for that. The victim was supposed to be working off his debt down south when he left for Wisconsin, and his abductor came after him. Billeb said it was a typical labor trafficking situation in which the victim is never able to work off their debt; they’re in debt for life.

“We were incredibly proud of their team for everything they did to make sure that they preserved a life. That’s at the core of what we do,” Billeb said.

Billeb said his department had completed several successful drug investigations that he was proud of. He also said his officers often have to deal with extremely difficult situations.

One story he was proud of happened the week before he gave this talk. One evening, deputies were sent to a residence on the east end of the county where a woman was scared because she believed her boyfriend was suicidal and he had access to guns. The woman locked herself in a second story bedroom and her boyfriend was right outside the door. When deputies arrived, they saw a ladder lying on the ground outside the house, and while one deputy distracted the boyfriend in the house, another deputy got on the ladder and rescued the woman, who was deathly afraid of heights, from a second story window.

“Those are the types of things that happen on a regular basis… We had a deputy that was on a transport, saw a vehicle stopped on the side of the road and thought, ‘Well, that just looked weird.’ He turned around and came back. He wound up doing CPR on a gentleman that had a heart attack while driving and saved him. That was a couple months back.

“They do things every day… We could put stories out all the time on the incredible work that they all do. The work they do in the jail, the de-escalation that takes place, the lifesaving, the suicide attempts that happen in our jail on a fairly regular basis that our staff are intervening in and preserving lives in our jail. Our 911 dispatchers who keep the calm as firefighters and EMTs and police officers are doing their thing. I’d put ‘em up against anyone. We’ve got incredible people at every level. And I’ll give a lot of credit to Sheriff (Scott) Parks and the leadership before me because they helped build that. I’m just fortunate that I get to be a part of leading it now.”

Marathon County Sheriff Chad Billeb speaks to Spencer residents at a presentation on June 13, informing them about the operations of the Marathon County Sheriff’s Office.

VALORIE BRECHT/STAFF PHOTO