Dean Bolerjack: the chief who became sheriff

1949 – 1971

The chief of three directories: The Mishawaka government page of the 1949 directory names the chief of police: Howard Dean Bolerjack, headquarters at City Hall, with Edw. Baldoni as his assistant chief. The classified pages of 1956 name him again — "Police Department, Dean Bolerjack, Chief, City Hall, 204 E. 1st" — and seat him, with the fire chief and the mayor, on the Board of Public Safety. The directory of 1963 names him again, chief still, the jail itself listed under his hand. Three directories spanning fourteen years hold one chief: whatever the department's mid-century history was, its face did not change across the 1950s.

The crossing: The county officers page of the 1963 directory names the sheriff of St. Joseph County: William J. Locks. The 1971 directory's county pages name the sheriff: Dean Bolerjack — and the same book's street and alphabetical entries give his residence as Mishawaka. Between the two books the Mishawaka chief crossed the line this section exists to record: the city's own police chief became the county's sheriff, commanding the county police, keeping the county jail and serving the county's courts from South Bend, while living in the city he had policed. When the crossing fell — at a January the election cycle would put in 1967 or 1971 — and how long he held the sheriff's office are not in the sources reached; the settling records are the county's election returns and the sheriff's own roster, and the shortfall is named rather than filled. The crossing is printed whole because it is the mid-century's complete service career: a Mishawaka servant who held the top uniformed office of the city and then of the county, documented at both ends by the directories' plain listings.

A tenure claim, tested: The city's announcement of Chief Ken Witkowski Jr.'s retirement in August 2024, carried in the Fire & Safety section, calls his twenty years as chief the longest service in the department's history. This section's rosters let the claim be tested rather than repeated. Bolerjack is chief in the directories of 1949, 1956 and 1963 — fourteen years between the first and last books — and the claim for Witkowski survives that test only if Bolerjack's full tenure, whose ends the directories do not fix, ran to less than twenty years: possible, since a chief seated by 1949 and gone to the sheriff's office by the turn of the 1970s could have served anywhere from fifteen years to twenty-two. The directories neither prove the city's claim nor break it; they bound it. The claim is therefore printed as the city's, the bound as this section's, and the settling record — the Board of Public Safety minutes that would date Bolerjack's appointment — is named in both sections' gaps.

Sources:

1. R. L. Polk & Co., Polk's South Bend and Mishawaka City Directory (1949) — "Chief of Police — Howard Dean Bolerjack"; Police Department, Dean Bolerjack chief, Edw. Baldoni assistant chief.
2. R. L. Polk & Co., Polk's South Bend and Mishawaka City Directory (1956) — Police Department, Dean Bolerjack chief; Board of Public Safety membership.
3. R. L. Polk & Co., Polk's South Bend City Directory (1963) — H. Dean Bolerjack, chief of police; county officers: Sheriff William J. Locks.
4. R. L. Polk & Co., Polk's South Bend City Directory (1971) — county officers: "Sheriff, Dean Bolerjack"; "Bolerjack Dean, sheriff, County Sheriff, r[esidence] Mishawaka."
5. City of Mishawaka announcement, 20 August 2024, as carried in the Fire & Safety section — Chief Ken Witkowski Jr. retired after twenty years as chief, "the longest serving Chief in Department history" on the city's statement.