THE WORD LOCAL SON

Full Circle in St. Francis

AS A YOUNG MAN, ALL ROBERT BOTSCH WANTED to be was a beat cop working somewhere near his hometown of St. Francis. So, he became one. Landing a job as a police officer, first in Milwaukee and then Cudahy, he was happy. But then, by chance, he sold his condo to an FBI agent. A spark was lit. “He told me everything there was to being an FBI agent – the types of investigations and resources that were available and I found it all really intriguing,” he explains. “So, I applied.” After making it through the gauntlet of the FBI’s application and background check process, Botsch was hired in 2002 and began in El Paso, Texas, investigating international drug trafficking. Eventually, when the chance came to come home, Botsch jumped on it. His first assignment as an agent in the Milwaukee office, about 14 years ago, was to the joint terrorism task force and then the squad handling gangs, violent crime and drug trafficking. From there, he began to climb the management ladder and rose to assistant special agent in charge of the local criminal and crisis management divisions. Botsch has overseen or had a hand in some of the Wisconsin bureau’s bigger cases, including when the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concertmaster was robbed of a 300-year-old Stradivarius violin valued at more than $5 million, the abduction of teenager Jayme Closs in northwestern Wisconsin and mass shootings at the Sikh temple in Oak Creek and Molson Coors’ Milwaukee brewery. “The swath is large when it comes to the amount of things that you can get involved in in the FBI because the jurisdiction is so broad,” he says. “Whether it’s gangs, violent crime [or] health care fraud and complex financial crime, there’s a little bit there for everybody.”

Still, Botsch says he’s amazed at how technology has changed both crime and law enforcement. “When I started, we had pagers. Now, you’ve got robots and drones and that helps make the job easier,” he says, adding that on the other side of the coin, “you can also pull a smartphone off your hip and commit a crime on literally the other side of the world.” Now that he’s more than 50 years old and has more than 20 years in the FBI, Botsch is eligible for retirement. So, he’s taking it – but not before one last big assignment as the FBI’s local point person for the Republican National Convention coming to town next July. He’ll be there to coordinate crisis management and response if any problems arise. “Milwaukee is the smallest FBI office to ever deal with a political convention,” he says. The FBI will send in additional agents to help the Secret Service, which is the lead security agency. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is also assisting. “Without giving an exact number,” he says, “it will likely more than double our [FBI] staff.” Botsch says he’s ready for the challenge. “I’ve served as a member of our SWAT team, a member of our crisis negotiation team and a member of our crisis management team for the bulk of my career,” he says. “So from that standpoint, this type of stuff is kind of what I’ve trained in and prepared for – developing the best possible plans in order to make sure that things go smoothly.” And after he retires from the FBI, Botsch wants to return to his roots. “My goal is to stay in southeastern Wisconsin and ideally, I would like to see if I can locate a police chief job,” he says. “So I’m not done serving yet – I’d like to go back and do traditional law enforcement again at the local level.”