With the start of the new year, I would like to continue with providing information on the various aspects of the Kewaunee County Sheriff’s Department. This week I will be focusing on our administrative assistants.

In every organization, there is a system which allows for the smooth and reliable transfer of information from one component of the organization to another. It is the center of all activity, and its success relies on constant communication and the ability to adjust to changes on a moment’s notice. For the Kewaunee County Sheriff’s Department, these processes involve the handling of all documentation from traffic citations to accident reports, civil process to criminal charge requests, juvenile referrals to open records requests. They involve providing information to agencies throughout Kewaunee County, the State of Wisconsin and in some cases the federal government.

All of this activity falls under the duties of “sheriff’s administrative assistant”, and in Kewaunee County we have two of the best: Mary Berkovitz and Angie Mueller. To provide a glimpse into the daily life of these two will be difficult in the space I have available for this article, but I will try to provide a broad overview.

From the moment a report is generated to the time when it goes to court, our administrative assistants are a vital link between the responding officers and the supervisory staff, where reports are filed, reviewed, proofed and ultimately submitted to either the district attorney’s office, Human Services or the many other agencies with whom we work with on a daily basis. Here at the sheriff’s department, all reports are dictated by the responding officers, which then require them to be transcribed by the administrative assistants. This accounts for a great deal of the volume of work that is done by these two employees. Beyond just transcribing, they also must make sure all of the incidents are coded correctly so that the monthly reports to the Department of Justice are accurate and reflect the actual offenses occurring in Kewaunee County.

Beyond the world of law enforcement reports, they are also involved in the civil process work that is done at the sheriff’s department. This involves the service of court orders ranging from sheriff sales to writ of executions, evictions to restraining orders. Even after the reports have left the sheriff’s department and the cases have moved forward in the legal process, many times we receive requests for various reports which these two employees facilitate.

In the world of law enforcement where documentation is everything, the need for accurate and timely reports is vital and we are very fortunate to have two dedicated individuals who make sure the “I’s” have been dotted and the “T’s” crossed. Thank you Mary and Angie!

Matt Joski is the sheriff of Kewaunee County.

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press Gazette: Sheriff's corner: Administrative assistants