A Look at Roseville's Two New Lieutenants

Surrounded by their family, friends and colleagues, Roseville Police Sgts. Scott Williams and Erika Scheider were promoted to the rank of lieutenant Thursday afternoon in the City Hall council chamber.Williams will assume control over the operations of the force’s 36 patrol officers, Police Chief Rick Mathwig said. Scheider will continue to lead Roseville’s investigative unit.
“They have wonderful leadership skills, and at their level I don’t need managers--I need leaders,” Mathwig said.
For Williams, a Roseville native, the promotion to lieutenant means he no longer will work the night shift, which he has done (voluntarily, Mathwig claimed) for more than 15 years, or almost his whole career. 
“Believe it or not, midnight hours did actually work really well for our family,” Williams said in a speech.

His wife, Jen, who sat in the front row during the ceremony with her husband’s mother and their two children, said the change will be “very nice for our family.”

Scheider started at the Roseville department in 1997 with a newly minted psychology degree from Augsburg College and she had, she said, “not a whole lot of experience and pretty green.”

She worked her way up through the patrol unit into detective work, serving a stint as a hostage crisis negotiator and earning a master’s degree in  police leadership, administration and education from the University of St. Thomas.

During her speech, Scheider praised her mother, Mary Heieren of Fridley, for her patience and fortitude.

“My mom went shopping for me at Goodwill for my prostitution detail,” she said, “and told me if the skirt was too tight. Now that I have kids, I understand that was a really difficult thing to do.”

Scheider added later, “I stopped doing prostitution details after I had my kids.”