SHAWANO COUNTY, Wis. (NBC 26) -- Mass shootings have plagued the nation this year.
But Chief Deputy George Lenzner says Northeast Wisconsin is tortured with crime troubles of its own.
"Domestic violence complaints have seemed to skyrocket," Lenzner said about calls the Shawano County Sheriff's Department receives. "We also went up in suicides this year."
Lenzner says even before 2021, Shawano County saw an uptick in certain domestic crimes and violence since March of last year.
"People just aren't out doing their everyday things at those times and it caused a lot of depression," he said. "It caused some people to be angry."
According to Lenzner, overall crime is back at a pre-pandemic level in his area. But he says another issue is taking the lives of Shawano County citizens.
"I noticed an uptick in elderly suicides," Lenzner said. "These elderly people are pretty much locked in their home. They're the ones that especially didn't go out."
And Kewaunee County is experiencing some of the same problems.
"Unfortunately yes, we have seen both an increase in not only mental health calls, which we typically classify as emergency detentions where somebody has threatened to cause harm or injury to themselves... we've had to utilize those services to get them to a better place, Kewaunee County Sheriff Matt Joski said.
Joski says the last year has been tough on some of the county’s youngest people.
"What ends up manifesting is criminal behavior, disorderly conduct, batteries, assaults," the longtime sheriff said. "But when you go back to what actually was causation, it usually comes back to mental health."
Joski says the key to reduce some crimes in Northeast Wisconsin is to spread a message of hope.
"People are acting in such ways that it's not necessarily because they are inherently criminal or inherently bad, but they're struggling with something that manifests itself in a criminal act," Joski said.
Per End Domestic Abuse Wisconsin, there were 52 domestic violence homicides throughout the state in 2019.
