Probation Department Credits 'Showing Up' Strategy In Monday Apprehension

WAUKESHA — A scheduled compliance check at a duplex in the 1900 block of Pewaukee Road ended Monday morning with two apprehensions, and the Waukesha County Department of Corrections says the outcome is best explained by a strategy it has taken, in recent internal materials, to calling "showing up."

Field supervisor Karen Dietzel, 54, who oversees the department's community corrections unit, said the check was not a raid, a sting, or the product of any tip. It was, she said, simply the date and time two supervised individuals were scheduled to be seen, carried out by an agent who arrived at that date and time.

"There's no trick to it," Dietzel said. "You put it on the calendar. You go on the day. That's the whole strategy, and I understand it doesn't sound like one, but I've been doing this 19 years and I can tell you it isn't nothing."

The Check

Senior probation agent Tim Roeper, 41, arrived at the address at 9:40 a.m. Monday for what the department's paperwork lists as a routine residential compliance check, the second of three scheduled for his caseload that day. Roeper said he knocked, identified himself, and was let inside without incident.

Two women present at the duplex, ages 33 and 36, were found to have outstanding violations unrelated to the reason for the visit, including missed drug screenings and a lapsed curfew reporting requirement dating to early June. Both were taken into custody without further incident and transported to the Waukesha County Jail, according to Roeper's incident log.

Roeper said he did not regard the apprehensions as remarkable in themselves. What he found worth mentioning, he said, was that neither violation had come to light through surveillance, informants, or any of what he called "the exciting stuff." It came to light because he was standing at the door at 9:40 a.m., as planned, on a Monday.

"Showing up remains foundational to the work. I'd stop short of calling it underrated, because I'm the one saying it, but I don't think that makes it less true."

— Tim Roeper, senior probation agent

Underutilized, Department Says

Dietzel described attendance-based compliance checks as one of the county's "most underutilized yet surprisingly effective" investigative strategies, a phrase she said she has used in two of the department's last four quarterly briefings. She said the unit's 11 field agents complete roughly 60 scheduled checks per month, of which Monday's was, by her estimate, an entirely typical example.

Asked why a scheduled check would surface violations that hadn't already been flagged, Dietzel said the answer was less about detection than persistence. "People plan around the big enforcement pushes," she said. "They don't always plan around a Tuesday afternoon, or in this case a Monday morning, when someone with a clipboard is just supposed to be there."

She added that the department has discussed, informally, whether to give the approach a more official name for training purposes, and that "showing up" has so far survived two internal meetings without being replaced by anything more technical.

Neighborhood Reaction

A neighbor two doors down, who gave her name only as Pam and said she has lived on the block for six years, said she noticed the agent's county vehicle in the driveway around 9:30 a.m. and did not think much of it. "They come by sometimes," she said. "It's usually pretty quiet. This time it was a little less quiet."

Roeper said both women were cooperative during the apprehension and that the encounter lasted approximately 12 minutes from knock to transport. He said he completed his remaining two checks for the day on schedule, including one that he said turned up no violations at all, which he characterized as "also a good outcome, just a less interesting one."

The Department of Corrections said it does not plan to alter its compliance check schedule in response to Monday's outcome, on the grounds that the schedule is, in Dietzel's words, "the part that's already working."