Many excellent experiences came from my grand jury tenure during the summer of 2024.  As the foreman, I had the additional benefit of swearing in all the witnesses, and because of that, I was able to get to know a lot of the police officers of Butler County, Ohio, and pick up on a few trends that are not so obvious unless you get a chance to talk to a lot of them at the same time.  I’ve known a lot of cops in the past, but it’s a different perspective when they are in their professional capacity and providing evidence and testimony under oath.  And there’s that radical concept again, an “oath” where a person’s integrity is weighed against the judgment of eternity and God’s wrath.  Without that, what worth is a swearing-in?  After doing it hundreds of times now, it made it pretty clear to me that the true value of our culture resides in the ability to derive honesty out of a temptation to provide fiction.  Yet, it was good to see police officers from all different backgrounds and working shifts show who they really are, and in the case of Butler County, I felt a lot of pride seeing that admirable traits among them were not unusual.  My feelings about police don’t mean that we can spend infinite amounts of money on their jobs through police levies and other increased taxes.  If society throws its values into bed with the teaching profession, I’ll have to take a pass because they are different.  Police work is dangerous and complicated.  It takes a special kind of person to do it.  Many would say that is the same argument for public school teachers, but I wouldn’t.  I value police in a much different way than teachers.  There are alternatives to public schools that can provide a child with a much better education method.  But with police, if you don’t have them, and good police at that, then society quickly drops into the gutter as the riff-raff becomes emboldened and strives to consume society with crime.

One undeniable thing is that most of the police officers I met in Butler County, Ohio, were under thirty and had a lot of tattoos, especially on their arms.  That was surprising, as it’s an obvious war code among cops, even with women.  All of them spoke very well while providing testimony.  People who want to be cops are wired differently; we should be thankful they are.  Whatever their private behavior has been when they let their hair down and converse among friends, their professional demeanor is more than respectable, and it gives hope that with such people maintaining that thin blue line, there is hope for social reform that is productive, normally when we experience police officers, it’s under some sort of tragedy.  It’s probably under the circumstances of one of the worst things to ever happen to us, even if it’s a minor traffic infraction.  But from the perspective of a grand jury, where the top sentiments of law and order are presented to be reviewed by civilian oversight, the value of a reasonable police force is unmistakably apparent.  You can appreciate that the world is much better because we have law enforcement as a job.  Without law enforcement, who is there to ensure a community’s laws are followed?  From the legislature that writes the law under civilian elections and representation to the prosecutor’s office, which has to take legal infractions and prosecute them in court.  Without the police there to do the work and separate the lawbreakers from the multitudes trying to function freely under the rule of law, chaos is quickly the outcome. 

I felt sorry for many police officers I heard that presented testimony and evidence.  The legal system has become a very fussy occupation due to an abundance of lawyers and political pressures that have migrated into the Bar Association, which is tied to many hostile political forces.  Police officers put themselves at risk when engaging with a public on the fringes of sanity and social order.  And under those conditions, they (the police) have to tiptoe around the individual rights of every citizen when it would be much easier to bust people because you know they are up to no good.  It’s a slippery slope in how evidence and cases go to court, and if a police officer slips up while collecting and witnessing proof, the case will be tossed out by a prosecutor’s office for lack of evidence.  Most prosecutors are people who get jaded about what can survive a jury trial, and crafty con artists’ defense attorneys will punch holes into any evidence gathered, even if it’s obvious.  I was able to deal with some cases where the police were put in danger of functioning as cops, only to have the prosecutors dispute how the evidence collected was submitted for further processing.  Maybe there was a glitch in the body cam footage. Perhaps the police officer didn’t think to pull the street cameras that verified a timestamp on criminal activity.  You quickly get a sense that there is a lot of crime out there, but the only stuff that makes it to a grand jury and the result of a lot of police work is the terrible cases where the evidence is obvious. 

I was able to meet a lot of investigators as well, people who are older and have been around a while.  A pattern quickly emerges: anybody over 40 is a bit tired; they have presented evidence to many prosecutors over the years, and there is a lot of civilian oversight that often has a lot of trouble separating emotion from the law.  And they are skeptical of the process. Yet they are very well-spoken and generally love the idea of an American Constitution protecting individual rights.  But, from their perspective, at what expense are those rights protected?  Why should a child molester, a drug dealer, or a murderer be given individual rights when it is obvious to the officer that people are up to no good?  People who don’t respect their authority should be punished. When people don’t respect the rule of police, additional charges of failure to respect a lawful investigation can put the case center stage. A prosecutor will be reluctant to move a case forward because it is obvious the police officer was upset at the lack of respect they were getting while interacting with the criminal community.  After seeing all that, I was glad to see we had enough people in society who wanted to do the job because it was crucial.  It may not pay that much, and they work many erratic hours.  And you don’t see too many old cops on the beat these days because it’s a young person’s game.  It takes a lot of tenacity not to become disgruntled with the process.  But it is a process we need, and police are crucial to maintaining a civil society.  And I can say now that I’ve met so many of them in Butler County, Ohio, that we have a lot of good ones.  And I am glad they do what they do. 

Rich Hoffman

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