Violent offenders no match for Big Sis

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Violent criminals and repeat gun offenders beware, Big Sis is watching you.

Rita Rumbelow, an assistant attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Madison, earned the moniker from cohorts in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who regularly tap her knowledge of gun law. Her diligent application of the law in violent cases has landed a maximum sentence for a notorious spouse abuser that unanimously was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

More recently, she linked a gang member’s habitual marijuana use with a felony prosecution for a weapon stowed in his trunk that had been used in an Easter weekend shooting.

“Some people don’t want to live law-abiding lives and, for the sake of the community, we put them back in prison,” she said.

Rumbelow has a track record with the ATF, serving in the late 1980s as a field agent in the bureau’s St. Louis office, which was invaluable first-hand experience in gang-heavy detail.

“Pluck a girl from rural Rhinelander, take her to St. Louis and give her a gun and badge, and you learn fast,” said Rumbelow, who now lives with her teenage son and daughter in Madison.

After a few years of work at the ATF, Rumbelow realized she didn’t want to carry a gun any longer. She wanted to handle legal challenges further down the criminal justice stream.

So she went back to school, getting a law degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1994. In little time, Rumbelow was hired by the U.S. Attorney’s Western District of Wisconsin office, specializing in weapons cases.

Through the federal attorney’s office, Rumbelow has led initiatives such as Safe Neighborhoods, which works with local law enforcement and specially targeted areas on enforcing existing gun laws. In another special investigation unit, Rumbelow is on a committee with community leaders and police that reaches out to felons with incentives for jobs and housing to “stick with” a life outside of incarceration.

Since 2002, Meredith Duchemin has worked as an assistant attorney with Rumbelow in the U.S. Attorney’s office. When a horrific case involving a kidnapping of a child came their way, Duchemin recalled Rumbelow’s understanding of weapons that landed the offender a heavier sentence.

“[Rita] really believes that a large part of her job is to protect the public at large from the most dangerous, armed criminals in the western district of Wisconsin,” Duchemin said. “She has an eye on the public’s protection in every case and every case that gets selected for prosecution.”