Airport lacks law enforcement presence: Austin Straubel International (KGRB), Green Bay, Wisconsin

As the airport serving Wisconsin’s third-largest city, Austin Straubel International has service from several commercial airlines, four rental car companies and a sizable gift shop that sells Green Bay Packers memorabilia and Wisconsin cheese.

 But it doesn’t have any sheriff’s deputies stationed at the facility, and that worries some Brown County lawmakers. They say the airport should have a deputy at the facility at times when passengers and employees are present, as many other large- and mid-sized airports have.

“The last thing we want to see is an incident out there,” said Patrick Buckley, a retired police officer who heads the county’s Public Safety Committee.

Currently, the Brown County sheriff’s department responds to calls at the airport when needed, but does not have a budget that allows a deputy at the facility full-time. The department staffs public facilities such as the county’s downtown courthouse and the east side jail, but focuses on having officers available to patrol the county’s highways and rural communities.

To date, the strategy seems to have worked. The sheriff’s department has not needed recently to seek additional funds from the county, and has avoided major incidents at the airport.

But some supervisors suggest that the county must consider whether the existing strategy is enough to offset the possibility of a major incident.

“When you don’t have an incident, you think everything is OK,” Green Bay supervisor Guy Zima said at a Public Safety Committee meeting earlier this month. “But what happens if you have an incident?”

At Zima’s suggestion, the committee agreed to hold further discussion on the matter in January.

Among the issues likely to come up: How the county would fund the additional policing. Brown County Airport Director Tom Miller said that some airports, such as Outagamie County Regional Airport, have been able to obtain funding from the federal government to offset the costs of airport policing. But he said such funding is becoming more difficult to get than it had been in previous years.

Source:  http://www.htrnews.com

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