The police chief should not be writing the official public record of the committee responsible for overseeing his own department. Yet that is exactly how they operate in the Village of Holmen.
Look at the Village’s own published Law Enforcement Committee documents. They routinely end with the exact same stamp: “Minutes By Shane Collins, Chief of Police.” This isn’t speculation. It is printed directly on the July 7 minutes, and it even appears on the April 2026 minutes—for a meeting that didn’t actually happen.
Chief Collins is not a voting member of the Law Enforcement Committee. He appears before it as the head of the department the committee is appointed to scrutinize.
That distinction matters.
The person presenting the information is also writing the history
The committee hears the chief’s reports on policing, budgets, contracts and surveillance operations. Committee members are then supposed to discuss those subjects, apply oversight and make recommendations to the Village Board.
Afterward, Collins writes the minutes describing what happened. A month later, the committee approves what he wrote. That gives the chief control over the first draft of history concerning his own pitches and his own department.
I am not claiming the minutes are outright fabricated. I am asking why Holmen tolerates a system in which the entity being overseen holds the pen and decides how the oversight body’s work is recorded.
I searched for other municipalities operating this way
I searched through published law enforcement, police commission and public safety committee records from municipalities and counties across Wisconsin. I reviewed records from communities including Cottage Grove, Elm Grove, Black Earth, Grafton and Centuria, along with committee records from Pepin, Brown, Price, Columbia and Sauk counties.
I did not find another municipality in that review where the police chief routinely wrote the official minutes for the committee directly overseeing the chief’s own department. Not one.
Cottage Grove’s Law Enforcement Committee records identify both its police chief and a deputy clerk as staff present. Columbia County states that the original signed copies of its Public Safety Committee minutes are maintained by the County Clerk’s Office. Brown County directs its Public Safety Committee records through the County Board Office.
Those arrangements create at least some separation between the officials presenting police business and the people responsible for preserving the committee’s record. Holmen appears to have erased that separation entirely.
The practice also extends beyond the Law Enforcement Committee. The October 2024 Holmen Police Commission minutes concern interviews and the promotion of a police lieutenant. Those minutes also end with “Minutes by Shane Collins, Chief of Police.”
So the chief was not merely participating in a personnel process involving his own department. He also wrote the official account of that process.
This does not prove illegality. It proves that Holmen has adopted an unusually conflicted practice that other communities appear to avoid.
Minutes determine what the public can prove
Meeting minutes are not a transcript. They are a summary. Someone decides what makes the cut, what gets shortened and what gets left out. That judgment becomes critical when a committee is debating surveillance technology, policing budgets or contracts heavily promoted by the chief.
The May 2025 Law Enforcement Committee minutes show exactly why this is a problem. The minutes describe, in the third person, Collins telling the committee that Flock Safety cameras have been a “great tool.”
The official record captures the favorable comments. It completely omits any detailed debate about privacy implications, outside access to our license-plate data, data-retention periods, contract terms or alternatives to Flock.
Did the committee completely fail to ask those basic questions? Or were questions asked, debated and left out of the chief’s summary?
Without an independent clerk, a transcript or a public audio recording, residents have no way to know. The public is left with an official account written by the same official promoting the purchases and policies being discussed.
The committee approves the minutes at a later meeting. That is a check, but it does not make the original record independent. Approving minutes is usually a routine agenda item. Unless committee members made their own detailed notes or have a recording available, they are approving the summary placed in front of them.
The chief still decides what goes into the first draft. Once that draft is approved, it becomes the official history. Anything left out may be lost permanently.
This is especially troubling when surveillance is involved
The conflict becomes harder to dismiss when the committee is considering surveillance technology recommended and operated by the police department. The chief promotes the system. The chief describes its effectiveness. The chief’s department uses it. The chief reports back to the committee about it.
Then the chief writes the public record of that discussion on Holmen Police Department letterhead.
Residents are supposed to trust that every serious concern, difficult question and opposing comment received fair treatment in a summary written by the person with the strongest institutional interest in defending the program.
That is not meaningful oversight, but I am discovering, in Holmen, Wisconsin oversight isn’t much of a concern,