Alison Dirr

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

WAUSAU – Marathon County authorities acted appropriately when they sent two dozen officers and an armored vehicle to seize property from an elderly couple in the town of Stettin, Sheriff Scott Parks said Monday in response to critics.

The Sheriff's Department has been inundated with calls and emails about police militarization since the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published a story Saturday about the Oct. 2 incident.

The article begins, "When officials in the tiny Town of Stettin in Marathon County went to collect a civil judgment from 75-year-old Roger Hoeppner this month, they sent 24 armed guards. And an armored military vehicle."

But department officials told local reporters Monday that neither the vehicle nor the number of officers was meant as a show of force.

Parks and other department officials said the truck, which does not have weapons attached to it, was meant to protect the deputies on scene who were seizing property as part of a court order on the morning of Oct. 2. They said the vehicle was brought onto the property only when Hoeppner, his wife and adult son, who were all in the house at the time that two deputies tried to give them the document, started closing curtains and "scurrying" around inside instead of answering the door.

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"That's not normal behavior and it causes us concern, especially when there are a lot of threatening statements leading up to this and our attempts at arbitration and mediating this out failed," said Chief Deputy Chad Billeb, who was at the scene that morning.

This follows a "longstanding problem" between Hoeppner and the town that includes threats, heated arguments that deputies had to break up and allegations that Hoeppner and members of the Town Board had brought guns to meetings, Billeb said.

"We don't want to take a chance with our officers' safety," he said.

The 24 officers were there to speed up the work of accounting for a significant amount of property, including tractors and thousands of wooden pallets, to be seized as part of a judgment worth tens of thousands of dollars, Billeb said.

The town filed a civil action in 2008 against Hoeppner and his wife, Marjorie Hoeppner, according to court records. Billeb said the case goes back to a zoning dispute in which the town had tried to clean up Hoeppner's property after he refused to do so and had billed him for associated expenses. The $86,000 covered those costs plus interest and other costs, according to court documents.

Attorney Ryan Lister said he and Hoeppner, his client, were not available for comment Monday but could speak with a Daily Herald Media reporter on Tuesday. But Lister sent a news release to various media organizations, including Daily Herald Media, on Oct. 17, that included what he said was a photo of the vehicle on the Hoeppner property. The release was headlined, "Elderly couple's home stormed by military-style enforcement of a civil judgment by Wausau-area township."

Billeb said the armored vehicle is not a weapon in and of itself and that its use was not an escalation of the situation. The department has had the armored vehicle since 2011 and has deployed it 53 times.

According to the department, soon after deputies started counting the items on the property, Roger Hoeppner came out of the house. When staff tried to calm him, he got "pushy" and tried bowling past them. At that point, a lieutenant decided to handcuff him and put him in the back of a squad car. On the way to the jail, Hoeppner agreed to pay the judgment, at which point officers left the property without seizing anything.

A disorderly conduct charge was filed Monday against Hoeppner as a result of the incident.

The Hoeppners have filed a claim for damages against the town in the amount of $4.5 million, according to Lister's news release.

Alison Dirr can be reached at 715-845-0658. Find her on Twitter as @AlisonDirr