Sheriff: Most 2024 calls at Central Wisconsin Airport were self-initiated or minor; 21 led to police reports

MARATHON COUNTY, Wis. — The Marathon County sheriff's office told the county Public Safety Committee on Oct. 7 that while its computer-aided dispatch (CAD) records show 208 entries tied to Central Wisconsin Airport in 2024, many of those entries were self-initiated or nonemergency events and only 21 calls produced police reports.

Committee members sought the presentation after concerns raised in September 2024 about calls for service at the Central Wisconsin Airport in Mosinee. The sheriff's office said the raw CAD and RMS data can be misleading because a single incident can generate multiple records for different responding agencies.

The sheriff's office presentation, prepared with assistance from data officer Michael Schultz, broke the 208 entries into types. The office said 48 were alarm tests, eight were community-relations events, 19 were extra patrol logs or business security checks, one was a controlled burn and one was a traffic stop. Those self-initiated or administrative entries accounted for 106 of the 208 CAD entries. After excluding those, the presenter said 102 CAD entries remained — which the sheriff's office said represented about 15% of Mosinee's total calls that year.

Of the narrower set of calls, the sheriff's office said seven occurred overnight in 2024; the overnight calls included one vehicle lockout, miscellaneous service calls (such as items left with TSA), a criminal miscellaneous (more serious and likely resulting in a police report), 911 hang-ups and a medical emergency. Across all of 2024, 21 calls related to the airport resulted in assignment of a case number and thus a police report.

"I would caution you that anytime you get data from the sheriff's office and you're looking at what we call CAD data, RMS data, that that data, if you don't know what you're looking for and you don't know what you're looking at, can be incredibly confusing," the Sheriff's Office representative said during the presentation.

The sheriff's office said it had previously forwarded the cleaned data to Mosinee Police Chief Grams in July and invited municipalities to request assistance for large events or dignitary visits. The presenter also noted a standing mutual-aid agreement between Kronenwetter and Mosinee police that allows automatic dispatch of assistance when Mosinee is busy.

No formal action or vote was taken on the presentation; the committee received the report and had no follow-up motions recorded in the meeting minutes.

The committee thanked the sheriff's office for the overview and moved to the next agenda item.