Ordinance Officer Bob Larsen celebrates 25 years in law enforcement on October 4.
Ordinance Officer Bob Larsen didn’t set out to be in law enforcement, but this week he’s celebrating 25 years in the profession.
Originally pursing a degree in music at UW-Marshfield/Wood County and UW-Stevens Point, Larsen postponed his post-secondary schooling after three years. “I have a lot of passions, and music is one of them,” he said. “I think I ended up stopping stupidly because of lack of funds. UW was pricier than a tech college.”
During this hiatus, Larsen had an eye-opening encounter that eventually led him into the job he has today.
“I ended up getting stopped by a State Patrol,” he explained. “He had me dead to rights going 32 mph over the speed limit. I was going to pick up my ex-wife for an appointment when she was pregnant. I ended up not receiving a citation.
“I remember getting a warning and thinking how nice he was and I thought, ‘This is what I should do.’ And here I am 25 years later.”
Larsen went back to school, but this time instead of music he pursued an AAS in Police Science through NTC in Wausau, supporting himself by working security at Fleet Farm.
“It is what you make of it,” said Larsen of that job. “There should be no downtime or boredom in a security setting. If there is a person there, they should be watched. That job opened my eyes up about what’s out there. People will lie to you, and it’s unfortunate.”
After finishing school, there was a job opening as a dispatcher. “I thought, ‘What a cool way to start a career’,” said Larsen. “I applied, but didn’t get the job.”
However, he received a call six months later that there was another opening, which he took.
“Dispatch was supposed to be a quick stepping stone for me to become an officer,” said Larsen. “But things didn’t work out that way. I sat in dispatch for thirteen years. Thirteen long years.”
Though stressful and overwhelming most days, Larsen learned valuable skills while working dispatch.
“It was an experience. I’m not just saying this: those dispatchers are grotesquely underpaid for what they do, for what abuse they take on the phone. The call volume is immense. They are so overwhelmed the majority of the time. That was a huge eye opener,” he said. “At that time, we were also Marshfield Electric and Water after-hours answering. During a storm, it was just bonkers. Not only did you deal with alarms- you’re sending ambulances out, you’re sending fire out, trees are down, you might have people stuck in water. There was so much that you had to do as one person, even two.”
Larsen has many memories of his time working dispatch. Some he’d rather not remember, but they stick with him.
“I distinctly remember being on the phone with somebody talking to their deceased loved one while they are saying their goodbyes. I’ve still got that in my head. I still think of that,” he said. “Another I remember is one morning, it was freezing. Calls for crashes started coming in and I was just one person. It was nuts.”
Another rough morning for Larsen was the “Magic Moments” fire of April 1, 2005.
“I came on at 6:00am that morning. The 9-1-1 came in and I was like ‘this can’t be true’. I handled everything that morning by myself before they were able to get someone in to help,” he said. “I remember going home at 6:00pm that evening. I was physically exhausted and I was mentally spent. There’s so much to coordinate. It was such a cluster. I was in bed by 7:30pm. Those are the unpredictable things that happened.”
Also trained as an SRT team negotiator, Larsen would sometimes need to use those skills to talk to someone who was suicidal.
“There are times when you’re on the phone with somebody who wants to kill themselves,” he said. “You become the first person that they are talking to and the person they trust.”
Those calls, along with those involving children, were the hardest. “Anything that involves kids is very difficult,” he said. “There were a several times as a dispatcher that you just lose it. I couldn’t stop smoking cigarettes. You’re just a blubbering fool.”
Larsen said one of the hardest parts of the job was not knowing what happened at the end of a call, after passing it along to officers. “It’s emotionally draining. You don’t know what the end of the call is, which is hard if it was a nasty one,” he said.
In 2006, when dispatch moved to Wisconsin Rapids, an Ordinance Control job opened. Larsen was ready for a change.
“The job came up and that’s what I wanted to do,” he said. “In July 2006, I started with Dan Leonard. I’ve been doing this job ever since.”
To prepare for his new role, Larsen was vaccinated against rabies and attended humane officer training in Madison. Though it was a bit of learning curve at first, Larsen’s training as a dispatcher proved useful.
“What was surprising was how busy it is in this position. Besides being so busy, I was so green,” he said. “As a dispatcher you’d get the call, you’d send it to Dan. Now I’m that person getting the call shipped to them. Now it’s on you to make the correct call.”
“Failure in the job – not to an extreme – is your best teacher,” he added. “You never forget that thing you may have done wrong. It helps you in future calls. We’re human. We’re not robots who drive a vehicle. We’re people, we make mistakes, we move on.”
During his time in dispatch, Larsen learned to prioritize – something that proved useful in Ordinance Control as he balanced parking violations with stray dog complaints.
“I remember the first raccoon I picked up. It was in a live trap. It was hysterical. The thing hissed, snarled, and reached through and wanted to get ya. I remember walking up and thinking, ‘I’m not touching that.'” he recalled. “Dan actually ended up picking the trap up and walking up to the van. That was part of that learning curve. Now when I walk up to a raccoon, I carry on a conversation with them. I’m silly that way. Now it doesn’t bother me at all. The first thing was scary. It’s amazing what wild animals can do if you don’t watch your backside.”
Throughout the years, Larsen has noticed a shift from there being primarily parking complaints and secondarily, animal complaints, to today having many more animals complaints.
“The animal world has taken over. There are more of them,” he said. “Spaying and neutering is so important. There’s a big cat population in town and unless you get all of them and spay/neuter them, you’re never going to get ahead of the game. It’s impossible right now.”
An animal lover and advocate, Larsen brings compassion to his ordinance officer role.
“We lived in ‘MARSH’ ‘FIELD’. We are pushing animals out of their habitat. We are invading their habitat,” he said. “I personally think they are ticked off and they are coming back. We have bears in town. We have deer all over the place. You can’t outrun wildlife. It’s going to be here because this is where they live. A lot of time we have to acclimate ourselves to that. If they are being destructive, we can help with that to a degree. But, they have no place to go. You build a house and you’re taking somebody’s habitat.”
“I wish what people really really really… realized is the expense of owning a pet,” he added. “People get a cat or a dog, then it develops a problem and they don’t have the funds to take it to the vet. You can be cited for not having them taken care of. Vet care is one of the things that people neglect. Owning an animal is something you would compare to having a child. It’s expensive and if you’re not in it for the long haul, don’t get one.”
Larsen knows this firsthand, as a proud pet parent (with wife Leandra) to cats Nala and Paws.
“They’re fun,” he said. “There’s way too much estrogen in the house, though!”
Though his job is challenging at times, Larsen enjoys talking to people and having the opportunity to educate, adding that his focus has changed in his decades in law enforcement.
“I always wanted to get into the enforcement of it, now a lot of my attention has been helping the animals out more than enforcement,” he said. “People still get citations, that’s the way it’s going to be. Animals can’t talk. We are their voice and sometimes that ends in citations. Sometimes that ends up in written warnings to change what’s wrong and get to the right side of things.”
“Talking to people, education, is the best way to get people to fix things. A lot of times they don’t know maybe what they are doing wrong,” he added. “A lot of it is just talking to them about it, explaining to them that this is what I got, this is where we need to tweak it.”
Helping the animals has become more “vivid” this year because of the amount of animal cruelty that Larsen has witnessed this year. With the physical and emotional challenges of the job, he works hard to keep his professional and personal lives separate.
“It’s important that when you leave here, it stays here. That you don’t take it home,” he said. “It’s also important vice-versa, to come in and do your job and leave home at home.”
Since Dan Leonard’s retirement earlier this year, Larsen has passed along his accumulated wisdom to new Ordinance Officer Kayla Wolf.
“I’ve learned, never go into a complaint with a predetermined perception. Because almost every time you’re wrong,” he said. “You are kind of a guide. You need to work with people, talk to them like they are people. Communication is always a good thing. Passion can’t overpass judgement. You have to abide in the laws. You can have passion, but you also have to have judgement.”
No two days are the same regardless of whether he gets the same type of call, a fact that he enjoys.
“Not every single complaint is going to be the same as yesterday,” he said. “I thoroughly enjoy a challenge. As my age goes up, I like to think my brain gets better. I enjoy things that are more challenging to deal with, that have more facets. I like a challenge. And I enjoy talking to people.”
He also appreciates that there is a local resource to give quality care to the animals.
“I want to give a shout out to MAPS. It was a learning curve going to them, but when you go out there now, when you pick up a sick cat kitten or maybe a dog, you know that the care it’s going to receive there is outstanding. You don’t feel bad picking something up like that. You get it there and you’re like ‘yeah it’s in good hands.’”
Last, but not least, Larsen urges everyone to: “Spay and neuter your pets!”
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