FDL Sheriff’s Office Busy this Spring Training New Recruits

It’s going to be a busy spring for the Field Training
Officers with the Fond du Lac County Sheriff’s Office. With four new hires
currently being trained, two more starting this month and a handful more
staring this summer – training officers will be working hard to get the new
hires ready to be out on their own. One of those new hires is Nate Birkholz,
who grew up in Fond du Lac has been on the road going through training since
January. Birkholz worked in the jail before moving to the road, where he says
that experience taught him communication skills. “That’s the biggest thing, talking
to people,” Birkholz said. “Especially when you come out to the road, you’re
not afraid to talk to people – you have that rapport with people you’ve dealt
with back in the jail, and dealing with the people who are also not very
cooperative.”


Despite being a Fond du Lac native, Birkholz says his
biggest challenge of adjusting to the road is learning the geography of the
county. “It’s a lot of area to know, memorize and study,” he said. The new
hires learn how to use a map to figure out where they need to go, but they do get
some assistance in the squad car, says Field Training Officer Nick Venne. “We
have a mapping system in our car that uses GPS and will, most of the time, give
us the correct, most efficient route there,” he said. “I let those guys use it,
just because these younger guys are more into technology, and that’s helping
them a lot more.” Birkholz says as he continues on with the sheriff’s office,
he’d like to serve on the SWAT team and possibly become a K-9 handler if the
opportunity arises.


Listen to an interview with Birkholz on KFIZ’s “Behind the Badge”