Whitewater: From patrol officer to chief, Dan Meyer says he’s invested

By Kim McDarison

Seated behind his desk at the Whitewater Police Department, Police Chief Dan Meyer’s demeanor is quiet and approachable. 

He arrived in Whitewater in 2010, at the age of 22, to take a position as a patrol officer. Today, a husband and father of three, Meyer said he’s eager to continue serving Whitewater, with additional plans to shape the city’s police department, and stay longterm. 

Appointed to the position of chief on Aug. 16, after serving as interim chief since last December, Meyer said he felt over the last few months like the department was “stuck in neutral.” 

Now that he’s assumed the role of chief, he said during an interview Thursday, “we can kick into drive and begin moving forward with a focus on longterm planning.” 

As earlier reported by Fort Atkinson Online, Meyer follows former police chief Aaron Raap, who signed a Release and Employment Disposition Agreement with the city in June. The agreement came after an investigation, which was begun by the city, according to information released by the city, in December. The city’s investigation followed an incident which occurred at Raap’s home in Waukesha County last November. 

While criminal charges alleging “battery-domestic abuse” were filed by the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office late last year, they were subsequently dismissed by Waukesha County District Attorney Sue Opper, who cited as reasoning, in a telephone interview with Fort Atkinson Online, her lack of a finding of sufficient evidence that there was an intention to inflict bodily harm. 

To date, city of Whitewater officials have not shared the results of the city’s investigation with Fort Atkinson Online. 

An earlier story about the investigation is here: https://fortatkinsononline.com/waukesha-da-ive-declined-prosecution-whitewater-officials-process-broader-effort/. 

For Meyer, the focus is on moving forward, he said. 

Choosing a career path

Meyer is a native of Eau Claire, he said. As a high school student, he thought he would find his career in fields related to math and science, but a political science teacher with a background in law enforcement piqued his interest in the field. Meyer said he began to see the potential in law enforcement for an opportunity to make a longterm difference, and work at something that did not require him to sit behind a desk. 

“Well, I am now,” he said, but new opportunities, albeit from behind a desk, will allow him to make a longterm difference of a broader scope, through shaping the goals of the department as a whole, he noted.   

Meyer graduated from high school in 2005, next attending the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. He graduated in 2009 with an undergraduate degree in criminal justice. 

While in college, Meyer said, he met his wife, Tera. After graduation, she found her first job in Madison as a civil engineer. Together they moved to the city and Meyer began attending police academy classes at MATC. 

After a 13-week course, which included 520 hours of training — Meyer noted that today police academy students train for 720 hours — in January of 2010, he landed his first job in law  enforcement as a patrol officer in Whitewater. 

A career in Whitewater 

Upon his arrival as an officer in Whitewater, Meyer said he was yet unmarried, but in 2011, he and Tera were wed and the couple moved, first to Fort Atkinson, and then they purchased a home in the town of Janesville. The family lives there today. The location allows both Meyer and his wife to drive relatively equal distances to work. Since graduating from college, Tera has remain employed with the same company. 

The family plans to continue living in Janesville, Meyer said. 

When Meyer chose a career in law enforcement, he made the decision because “I thought it would be enjoyable and I wanted to be out having conversations with people, and I could see that it made a difference,” he said. 

As he worked his way up through the ranks, he had less one-on-one time with residents, but each advancement offered opportunities to impact the full organization, he said.  

Looking back on his time as a newly hired police officer, he said, his first impressions of the job and the community were that he “had a lot to learn.” 

Describing Whitewater, he said: “it’s a very busy place.” He worked mostly second and third shifts. 

Of law enforcement in general, Meyer said he recalled hearing that it was 98% boring and 2% sheer terror, but in Whitewater, he was never bored. 

“Here, there’s always something going on, especially on third shift; it’s not a sleepy place,” Meyer said. 

Meyer described Whitewater as a community with a demographic that includes a younger population.  

The city is home to a UW system campus. 

When he began his career, he worked under then-Police Chief Jim Coan, but a year and a half later, he said, the department welcomed a new chief: Lisa Otterbacher. 

“She was a lieutenant when I was hired and coming up through the organization,” Meyer said, noting that after her promotion to chief, she served as his mentor.  

In 2013, Meyer said he was promoted to detective. The job changed his role within the department: instead of spending the majority of his time patrolling the community, he was working an assigned case load. 

As a detective, he said, he because part of the city’s detective bureau. The bureau is made up of a detective lieutenant, who is the bureau’s supervisor, two detectives, and a school resource officer. 

His job included investigation, processing crime scenes, and working with and following up on such cases as sensitive issues, drug enforcement, and cases considered high profile, such as robberies and sexual assaults.  

The department’s detectives also conduct in-depth investigations when the department is hiring someone new, he said. 

“When I was in the detective unit, we had a lot of burglaries and robberies,” he said, adding that like many cities, and especially those with young populations, detectives find themselves involved in drug work. He described burglaries and robberies as “a byproduct of the drug problem.”

In 2014, Meyer was promoted to the supervisory position of detective sergeant. Today, he said, the position is called detective lieutenant. 

With that change, he began seeing his job from a more global perspective, he said.  

New duties included executing search warrants and preparing the department for working through the accreditation process. He also became responsible for the contents and security of the department’s evidence room. 

A shift in structure

In 2015, the department underwent some structural changes, Meyer said. 

He recalled that both a captain and a lieutenant left in the same week. One found another job as chief in a different department and the other retired. 

With the departure of the two members of the force, an opportunity opened. Meyer decided to apply for the position of captain. 

He advanced to captain that year, serving under Otterbacher as the department’s second in command. He remained in the role until 2019. 

He described the advancement as “more administrative.” 

A change in leadership came in 2018, when Otterbacher retired and Raap was appointed as the city’s new chief. Under Raap’s leadership, the second-in-command position was retitled deputy chief, Meyer said, which effectively was a change in name only. 

Meyer served as deputy chief until December, 2021, when Raap was placed by the city on administrative leave and Meyer assumed the role of interim chief. 

Kicking into drive

Looking at the road ahead, Meyer said that some things since his arrival have stayed the same: when he started as a patrol officer, the department had 24 sworn officers. Today, that number is the same. 

Some things are different: recently, he said, the city has received a large influx of residents from the Central American region. 

“That brings a lot of challenges for both them and law enforcement,” he said. 

Meyer said, for him, the question is: “How do we positively connect with them so they trust us? Because they come from a place where you don’t want to meet law enforcement in a dark alley. 

“The new situation in January of 2022 started hitting all of us because of the demographic change.”  

Still, Meyer said, he likes challenges. 

Meeting challenges is what drove him to seek out promotions over the course of his career. He added: “I love to read, I love to learn, and when opportunity comes, I’m the type of person to go for it.”  

Looking at the course of his career, he said: “I like the path. I really enjoy what I’m doing and I want to make a positive impact on the department as a whole.”  

Meyer said he is invested in Whitewater and hopes to stay with the department for the rest of his career. 

Looking at the composite of the force, he said, “We have hired some very solid people in the last few rounds. We just hired two new people who are at the law enforcement academy in Kenosha. This whole organization is a very great group of people. They make it enjoyable to come to work every day.”  

As a chief, he said, “I hope to be as invested in this department as I can be. I do not want to ask anyone in this department to do anything that I wouldn’t do myself.”

Among goals for the department, he said, he would like to see the command staff, including himself, working outside of the office for four hours a week. 

“That’s 10% of the week. There really is a lot of work to be done from behind the desk and I don’t want to set us up for failure, but I don’t think 10% is too much to ask. I am very invested in making sure our people are successful,” he said. 

Also among his goals, he said: “I hope the community can trust the department and me. Personally, I don’t have a theory on the best way to police — too much time spent developing theories can cause you to lose focus. Be fully invested in the moment and the rest takes care of itself. Simply fix it, be there, be decent with people and a lot of that takes care of itself. 

“I hope people will see from my actions how invested I am. I prefer to listen. I love to not be the first to speak. You learn more by listening than by talking. I tell my kids: God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason.”