Surprising Stuff

To protect and to serve. The circle is complete. Geneva Lake is surrounded by four communities, each with its own police department. The communities are Lake Geneva, Town of Linn, Fontana and Williams Bay. Those four communities have unique police departments for a variety of reasons, almost all having to do with self-government and autonomy. The Walworth County Sheriff’s Department has the responsibility of policing the entire county, and they’ve done that to mixed reviews.

Crime is low in Walworth County, even though it has one of the highest incarceration rates in the nation. Yes, more than South Chicago, Harlem, New York or even the gangland counties of Los Angeles. Is the crime rate in Walworth County low because all the criminals are locked up, and therefore cannot commit crimes out on the streets? Or, is the crime rate low because the general citizenry that populates the county just isn’t predisposed to committing criminal acts? Is the incarceration rate high because somehow the very act of meeting a Walworth County Sheriff on any basis seems to become a felony? Deep inside Walworth County, beating slowly and quietly, like the four arteries that feed a warm healthy heart, are four small police departments run by four intelligent, caring and experienced police officers.

Laura Washer, Williams Bay Police Chief

Chief Mike Rasmussen is the much decorated and highly regarded chief of the Lake Geneva Department, Laura Washer is the brilliantly witty and very smart chief of the Williams Bay department, Jeff Cates is the new but well-seasoned and gifted chief in Fontana, and Mark Cates is a quiet, but very effective, chief of the department in Town of Linn. Is it that the communities surrounding Geneva Lake are a cluster of moderate, integrity-filled and model citizens, surrounded by a throbbing and heated hotbed of criminals, and out of control drug-frenzied zombies? Are the prosecutors spending their days in the five-star hotel-like county ‘Justice’ building in Elkhorn simply more voracious than a feeding shiver of sharks, and therefore anyone with an expired driver’s license goes down for a two-to-five sentence in Waupun? When a citizen enters a court as a defendant because of any purported infraction, citation or crime, and faces a judicial process center wherein the conviction rate is above ninety-eight percent (98%), then that citizen can expect to be found guilty no matter what the circumstances.

NEW VILLAGE OF FONTANA Police Chief Jeff Cates (left) and Sergeant Derrick Goetsch took office March 10, 2017 following the retirement of Steve Olson, …

What does that have to do with the fact that the four police departments have come together to form a bulwark of protective services around Geneva Lake? It means that in these communities the public’s first line of defense, the responding police officer first encountered, is very likely to be one that has been schooled and coached by a fine, intelligent and caring police chief, who is also going to immediately review that officer’s decisions and actions. At this time when police departments across the land stand accused of many video-taped outrages (most seemingly accurately portrayed), and even United Airlines assaults its own passengers (using ‘police-security’ forces), it becomes ever more important to have home security, and that starts with real security in the areas where citizens work and live. Security from crime, while at the same time security from being made into a criminal unjustifiably. Security from outside harm, while at the same time the security of knowing help is coming if harm visits, anyway. Fear is a natural and necessary part of the human condition, but fear of the police should not have to be a normal citizen’s lot in life.

It isn’t if you have the ‘four Geneva horsemen’ of protection and service as your guardians To Protect and To Serve. It is a good time to live around Geneva Lake and enjoy such great privilege.

Award Winning Amy’s Shipping Emporium

Amy wins award for being in UPS nations Top 100 Authorized Shipping Outlets. She is actually twenty eighty out of over 3000 Shipping outlets. Amy’s Shipping Emporium