In Pursuit of Justice: Memoirs of a Small-Town Sheriff

Law enforcement officers have the toughest job in America-keeping the public safe in a crime-ridden society. For nineteen years, Dan Hintz was one of those officers. Hintz always wanted to work in law enforcement. Police cars with their sirens and flashing lights caught his attention as a young boy each time they drove down the streets of his hometown, Shantytown, Wisconsin. Seeing local billboards of police officers leaning over to extend their hands to the children of his community made an indelible impression on him. The fact that officers could carry guns didn't hurt either. Gathering with his friends to play cops and robbers, he envisioned himself as a real police officer chasing down the bad guys, making sure they paid the price for their crimes. Law enforcement officers were his heroes and he wanted to be one of them. "In Pursuit of Justice" is a recollection of Hintz's childhood and adolescence, as well as experiences associated with a nineteen-year law enforcement career in central Wisconsin from the late 1960s until the first day of 1987. It depicts not only youthful discomfiture, but also family tragedies, accidents, and characters that are criminal in nature: miscreants, druggies, drunks, or just plain thugs. It also features individuals that are loveable and misguided, including those that just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hintz is Wisconsin's Andy Taylor-his book of short stories is chock full of small-town eccentrics. What he presented in those stories is emotional, humorous, frightening, tragic, and, above all, revealing. It confirmed the harsh reality that crime and misfortune exist everywhere regardless of whether you live in a big city or a small county with charming towns, rustic farms, and little white churches. Growing up poor on a small farm in central Wisconsin, Hintz depicts not only his often-tragic life from a previous generation but his time in the U.S. Army including a stint in South Korea as a communications specialist. Hintz's law enforcement career ran the gamut of tragic, dangerous, and bizarre circumstances: farm and auto accidents, murder, suicide, bar brawls, medical emergencies, dismembered bodies, creative drug trafficking, illicit liaisons, smart-mouthed citizens, a small-town bully, racial tensions, masturbation gone wrong, and a drug-fueled rock festival from a bygone era just to name a few. But the pinnacle of Dan Hintz's law enforcement career was his involvement in the removal of one of America's most investigated domestic terrorist groups-the Posse Comitatus. Described by the FBI as "one of the first organized manifestations" of a strain of extremism "espousing racial supremacy, but primarily focused on opposition to the federal government," Hintz helped direct the removal of the racist, militia-style group from its Tigerton Dells compound in central Wisconsin.