La Crosse police chief’s public judicial criticism something new for top cop

La Crosse police chief Ron Tischer’s forays into social media have typically lacked much of an edge.

On Twitter, Tischer typically tweets congratulations for promotions, retweets events involving K-9 units, puts out some pictures of his officers playing basketball; that kind of thing.

The Twitter war of words that has occurred more regularly between police and the La Crosse county circuit court judges has primarily been waged by assistant police chief, Rob Abraham.

Not anymore.

Apparently fed up with low bonds and light sentences and a perceived revolving door of justice, Tischer has used Twitter to lend his personal voice to the criticism of the local judicial system.

All of it appears to have been sparked by the bust last weekend of the drug house at 1018 Gillette St., right across the street from Northside Elementary.

Six men were arrested there on a variety of charges, but mostly for drug dealing.  Heroin, cocaine, fentanyl and marijuana.  Police found piles of drugs and thousands of dollars in cash and one felon was charged with having a gun.

Despite the charges, three were given cash bond amounts of $2,500.  Three others had only signature bonds.  Nearly all were out on the street the next day.

One of the six was arrested again on Friday.

During an interview with WIZM on Wednesday, assistant chief Rob Abraham said, “That’s what frustrates me, is all the good work the department does, that the officers do, to try to do best for the community and it just seems like everything from that point forward just falls apart.”

On Twitter the same day, Chief Ron Tischer expressed his frustration with, “How many lives need to be ruined and people need to die before we start taking drug dealers – esp fentynal dealers seriously – if not for narcan there would be hundreds of overdose deaths in Lax Cnty every year.”

On Saturday, Tischer followed with this tweet: “3 more overdoses (that we know of) last night…..and all the gun toting drug dealers are out of jail peddling their deadly products. What’s wrong with this picture.”