By Vicky Wedig
Editor
A City of Delavan police lieutenant has been accused of beating and strangling a woman at his home Dec. 19.
Lt. Todd Wiese was arrested later that day, booked and subsequently released from the Waukesha County Jail, according to a news release issued jointly Dec. 23 by City of Delavan Police Department and the Walworth County Sheriff’s Department.
Officials are seeking charges of strangulation, battery and disorderly conduct. The case has been referred from the Walworth County District Attorney’s Office to the Waukesha County District Attorney’s Office, the news release said.
According to officials, Delavan police requested assistance from the Sheriff’s Office at 2:46 a.m. Dec. 19 for an investigation of an incident involving Wiese at his Delavan home. Wiese was off duty at the time of the alleged incident.
Wiese was released from jail Dec. 21 after posting a signature bond.
Wiese is on administrative leave from the Delavan Police Department, which is conducting an internal investigation into the matter.
The woman involved in the altercation is someone Wiese is dating who does not live at his residence, Police Chief Tim O’Neill said Tuesday. Because the woman doesn’t live at the residence, the incident doesn’t meet the statutory definition of domestic violence, but it was “certainly a domestic type of call,” he said.
Wiese has been with the department for more than 20 years and has had no other arrests and no “substantial discipline action” before this event, O’Neill said.
He said his department will wait for the Sheriff’s Department to complete its investigation then will conduct an internal investigation, the results of which will be turned over to the Delavan Police and Fire Commission for a determination regarding disciplinary action.
