Chief Kurt Zempel has been with the Sheboygan Police Department since 2003 and was sworn in as Sheboygan’s Police Chief on January 20, 2025. He was previously the Assistant Chief of Police, Captain of the Patrol Division, and the lieutenant on third shift patrol. Prior to this assignment, he was the commander of the Sheboygan County Multijurisdictional Enforcement Group, the county’s drug unit, for more than two years, and also spent three years as a sergeant and field supervisor for second shift patrol. He served as committee chair of the department’s Law Enforcement Explorer Post, supervised the crash and crime scene reconstruction team, and is an instructor for Fair and Impartial Policing and member of the Honor Guard. He was co-commander of the Emergency Response Team (SWAT) for four years.
Prior to his promotion to sergeant, Kurt spent three years as a general-assignment detective. He also was assigned to the Sheboygan Police Department’s Street Crimes Unit, a specialized investigative, interdiction and intelligence-gathering unit focused on street-level crime, for more than two years.
In 2017, Kurt was selected as an instructor in the Leadership in Police Organizations curriculum by the Wisconsin Department of Justice, the IACP’s flagship leadership course, and instructs law enforcement leaders from agencies around the state.
Kurt received a bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, in Criminal Justice Management from Concordia University – Wisconsin in 2003. He obtained a Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree from the University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh in 2013, receiving the Steven Hintz MPA award which recognizes academic excellence and community involvement among MPA graduate students. His graduate field project, “Putting Police in the Box: The Effectiveness of Data-Driven Law Enforcement”, was nominated for the UW-Oshkosh Distinguished Masters Research Award in 2013. He was class president of the 133rd Administrative Officer’s Course at the Southern Police Institute, University of Louisville, where he received the Dr. William Walsh Director’s Award for academic achievement.
Kurt is proud to live and work in his hometown of Sheboygan with his wife and has two adult sons, and was honored to be their Scoutmaster and help them both earn their Eagle Scout rank. He is a lifelong musician, performing and accompanying in various capacities on piano, voice and trumpet, and has completed the Ironman Wisconsin triathlon in 2018 and 2021.
