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Ringersma a guiding light for Milwaukee’s near west side

By: Dan Shaw, [email protected]//June 20, 2019//

Ringersma a guiding light for Milwaukee’s near west side

By: Dan Shaw, [email protected]//June 20, 2019//

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Catelin Ringersma - Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office
Catelin Ringersma –
Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office

Plenty of lawyers can say they set their sights on a legal career at a young age.

But few can claim, as can Catelin Ringersma, that their future course was set in part while they were roller-skating around the floors of a courthouse. When Ringersma, now a Milwaukee County assistant district attorney, was growing up in Oconto, she lived across the street from the county courthouse, where her mother worked.

To keep her and her sister out of trouble, Ringersma’s mom would have them come to the courthouse to play.

An even more formative experience came when Ringersma was in high school and got to take part in a mock trial involving battery charges.

“I remember being in the role of having to prove that my classmate did it,” she said. “It seemed to me that something bad had happened and that, if I could show it did happen, that would be a good thing to do.”

According to her colleagues in law enforcement, Ringersma has done plenty of good at the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office. In nominating her for a Women in the Law award, Officer Thomas Ozelie of the Milwaukee Police Department praised Ringersma for the work she has done to help combat crime in Milwaukee’s near west side.

“I can’t recall the number of times my coworkers and I have emailed, texted or called Catelin with legal questions and she’s always ready to help,” Ozelie said. “It didn’t matter if we contacted her before work, after work, on her off days or even on vacation, she’s always been there to assist.”

For nearly the past three years, Ringersma has worked in the Milwaukee County DA’s community prosecution unit. Her assignment to Milwaukee’s near west side has her working in seven of the toughest neighborhoods in the city.

Ringersma says it’s her job to know which locations – and people – trouble is most likely to come from. She also tries to meet regularly with residents so she can ask them about their main concerns.

Sometimes the answers she gets are surprising. Rather than violence, residents are many times just as likely to complain about litter and broken windows.

Ringersma said she loves being a prosecutor and has a hard time imagining doing anything else in the legal field. As for the status of women lawyers, she acknowledged that progress has been made but much work remains to be done.

“It’s unfortunate,” she said, “but it’s not anything that’s any sort of setback in the sense that it’s going to affect who I am as a prosecutor.”

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