A Post at 5:04 PM Tells You Everything You Need to Know
When performative appreciation collides with power, public safety, and a refusal to listen
By Aaron Knapp, Lorain Politics Unplugged
This Story Is Not About a Facebook Post
National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day did not arrive unexpectedly on January 9. It is not a floating observance, nor is it tied to unfolding events or late breaking developments. It is a fixed date, known well in advance, with a defined purpose and ample opportunity for planning. Public offices that genuinely value recognition do not discover it midway through the afternoon. They calendar it. They schedule it. They lead with it.
Yet the Lorain County Commissioners Office did not acknowledge the day until 5:04 p.m. The image attached to that post was captured at 5:08 p.m., meaning the acknowledgment occurred at the tail end of the workday. By that point, most official business had concluded. The message did not open the day, frame the conversation, or signal priority. It arrived after the fact.
That distinction matters. Timing is not a superficial concern when it comes to public trust. It is one of the clearest indicators of intent. When appreciation is planned, it appears early and deliberately. When it is reactive, it appears late and defensively. The difference between those two is not cosmetic. It is substantive.
A late post suggests that recognition was not embedded into the day’s agenda. It suggests that appreciation was not a guiding value but a response to circumstances. And when acknowledgment follows criticism, internal concern, or the realization that silence will be noticed, it ceases to function as appreciation at all. It becomes a corrective gesture rather than an authentic one.
Public officials often underestimate how clearly residents read these signals. People understand the difference between something that was intended and something that was remembered. They understand the difference between leadership and cleanup. They also understand that words issued under pressure carry less weight than actions taken as a matter of principle.
This is why the timing of the post cannot be dismissed as trivial. It is not about aesthetics or social media etiquette. It is about credibility. It is about whether expressions of support align with conduct, priorities, and planning, or whether they exist primarily to manage perception.
This story is not about a graphic, a caption, or even a single post. It is about whether public acknowledgment reflects genuine respect or performative compliance. It is about whether appreciation is a value that guides decision making, or a message deployed when the absence of it becomes uncomfortable.
In public service, credibility is built not by what is said, but by when and why it is said.
Appreciation Is Easy. Collaboration Is Not.
Posting a message costs nothing. Supporting first responders requires something far more difficult: a willingness to listen, to share authority, and to restrain unilateral power.
The same commissioners who posted words of appreciation are currently engaged in an escalating dispute with Lorain County Sheriff Jack Hall over governance of the county’s 911 dispatch center. Publicly, they claim to support law enforcement. Operationally, they insist on exclusive control.
Those positions cannot coexist honestly.
You cannot praise service while rejecting participation from those tasked with delivering it.
The 2011 Memorandum Is Being Read the Way Power Prefers
The commissioners have framed the dispute over the county’s 911 dispatch center as a straightforward question of authority. Their public position emphasizes statute, organizational charts, and the idea that control over 911 operations is settled and exclusive. In this telling, the matter is already resolved, and any request for involvement by the sheriff is portrayed as unnecessary, disruptive, or even insulting.
Sheriff Jack Hall points to a different part of the record. He has repeatedly referenced the 2011 memorandum of understanding that consolidated dispatching for the Sheriff’s Office into the county’s 911 operations. That document does not merely reassign lines on an organizational chart. It repeatedly uses the word “collaborate” to describe the relationship between the sheriff and the commissioners.
That word matters.
“Collaborate” is not decorative language. It is not filler. In governance documents, it signals intent. It reflects an understanding that while dispatch operations may be centralized administratively, they remain operationally intertwined with the agencies they serve. The memorandum did not erase the sheriff’s stake in how dispatch functions. It acknowledged it.
Centralizing dispatch was not a declaration that law enforcement and fire leadership should be sidelined from decisions affecting response protocols, equipment reliability, staffing practices, or standard operating procedures. It was an efficiency decision, not a power transfer designed to silence operational voices. The memorandum reflects that distinction plainly.
Dispatch is not an abstract administrative service. It is a life critical function. Police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel do not experience 911 as a line item or a department. They experience it as the first link in a chain where seconds matter and failures carry consequences. The memorandum recognized that reality by explicitly calling for collaboration rather than subordination.
Reading the memorandum as a document that settled ownership while discarding its collaborative mandate is a choice, not an inevitability. It is a reading that privileges control over cooperation and authority over accountability. It is, in short, a reading that power prefers.
Reducing the memorandum to a question of who “runs” 911 strips it of its purpose. It transforms a shared governance framework into a unilateral one. It also ignores why collaboration was written into the agreement in the first place: because centralized systems still require shared responsibility when public safety is at stake.
When officials insist that the memorandum answers only the question of control and not the question of participation, they are not merely interpreting a document. They are redefining the relationship it was meant to govern.
That is why this dispute cannot be resolved by pointing to statute alone. Statutory authority and collaborative obligation are not mutually exclusive. The memorandum exists precisely because the drafters understood that distinction. To pretend otherwise is to read the document not as it was written, but as power finds most convenient.
Reducing the memorandum to ownership does not clarify the issue. It obscures it.
Calling This a “Turf War” Avoids the Real Question
Much of the public framing surrounding this dispute describes it as a bureaucratic turf war. That phrase appears frequently in commentary because it is familiar, seemingly neutral, and easy to digest. It suggests a clash of personalities, competing egos, or overlapping jurisdictions struggling to define boundaries.
It is also misleading.
Calling this a turf war implies that both sides are operating from equal positions of power, authority, and leverage. That is not the reality here. One side controls the structure, the funding, the contracts, the legal representation, and the administrative machinery that governs the county’s 911 operations. The other is seeking meaningful involvement in a system his office depends on to carry out its core public safety mission.
Those are not symmetrical positions.
The Lorain County Board of Commissioners holds the purse strings. It approves contracts, retains outside counsel, and directs administrative staff. It has the ability to escalate or de escalate conflict by choice. Sheriff Jack Hall does not control those levers. He relies on the system as it exists, and his concern is not abstract governance but operational impact.
When commentators frame this as a turf war, they flatten that distinction. They create the appearance of balance where imbalance is the defining feature. Neutrality in such a context does not promote fairness. It reinforces the advantage of the party already holding power.
This is why language matters. Words shape how disputes are understood and how responsibility is assigned. Labeling this a turf war suggests mutual obstinance rather than unilateral control. It shifts attention away from the substance of the sheriff’s concerns and toward a generalized frustration with conflict itself.
But conflict is not inherently the problem. Avoiding scrutiny is.
The sheriff is not seeking to seize control of 911. He is seeking involvement in decisions that directly affect law enforcement response, emergency coordination, and public safety outcomes. That distinction is often lost when the issue is framed as a power grab rather than a governance question.
The commissioners, by contrast, have consistently framed their position in terms of ownership. They have emphasized who “runs” 911 and who the statute places in charge. That framing centers authority while marginalizing participation. It treats involvement as optional rather than integral.
Describing this as a turf war also obscures accountability. If both sides are simply fighting over territory, then responsibility for resolution appears shared and diffuse. If, however, one side holds the authority to include or exclude the other from meaningful decision making, responsibility becomes clearer.
The real question is not who owns 911. Ownership does not answer questions about transparency, responsiveness, or performance. The real question is who is allowed to influence how the system functions, how failures are addressed, and how standards are set.
That question goes to the heart of public safety governance.
Dispatch is not a passive service delivered in isolation. It is an operational nexus that connects law enforcement, fire, and medical response. Decisions about staffing, technology, protocols, and oversight have direct consequences for those agencies and the residents they serve.
When the sheriff asks to be involved, he is not challenging authority for its own sake. He is asserting responsibility for outcomes that fall squarely within his mandate. Treating that request as a turf dispute trivializes the stakes and deflects attention from the underlying governance failure.
Calling this a turf war makes the story smaller than it is. In reality, it is about whether public safety systems are governed through collaboration or command, through inclusion or exclusion.
Framing it correctly is the first step toward resolving it honestly.
When Leaders Avoid Talking, Lawyers Fill the Gap
It is true that the Lorain County Prosecutor’s Office cannot mediate this dispute because it represents both the county commissioners and the sheriff. That conflict of interest has existed for years and predates the current officeholder. It is frequently cited as the reason the disagreement over 911 governance escalated beyond internal discussion and into a legal posture.
But that explanation is incomplete.
Mediation does not require a prosecutor. It does not require a court order. It does not require formal intervention at all. It requires willingness. It requires leadership that values resolution over dominance and understands that public safety disputes are best handled through dialogue before positions calcify.
When officials genuinely believe collaboration matters, they do not wait for a neutral intermediary to force them to the table. They initiate conversation themselves. They seek clarification rather than confrontation. They recognize that governance failures are not solved by asserting authority more loudly, but by addressing concerns directly and early.
What has been missing here is not a mediator. What has been missing is engagement.
The commissioners have repeatedly framed the sheriff’s requests for involvement as unnecessary, insulting, or wasteful. That framing matters because it signals how dissent is treated. Requests for participation are not engaged on their merits. They are dismissed as challenges to authority. Once that posture is adopted, escalation becomes predictable.
When dialogue is avoided, lawyers step in to fill the void.
Legal counsel does not create disputes. It formalizes them. Once attorneys are retained, positions harden, communication narrows, and costs begin to accumulate. What could have been resolved through meetings and mutual accommodation becomes a matter of letters, billing hours, and strategic posturing.
At that point, warnings about expense ring hollow.
Commissioners who express concern about taxpayer funded legal costs while simultaneously refusing to engage meaningfully in discussion are describing consequences of their own choices. Legal fees are not an unavoidable byproduct of disagreement. They are the result of decisions to litigate authority rather than negotiate responsibility.
The contradiction is difficult to ignore. On one hand, the public is told that hiring counsel is a waste of money and that budgets are strained. On the other, the actions that most predictably lead to higher legal costs continue unabated. That is not fiscal prudence. It is avoidance paired with blame shifting.
Public safety governance requires more than asserting who is in charge. It requires an understanding that leadership includes listening, especially when concerns are raised by those closest to operational risk. When that listening does not occur, the system defaults to legal mechanisms that are slower, costlier, and less responsive to urgent needs.
The presence of lawyers in this dispute is not the cause of its escalation. It is the evidence of it.
Legal fees did not appear out of nowhere. They followed the decision to stop talking.
Public Safety Failures Are Not Hypothetical
This dispute is not occurring in a vacuum. It is unfolding against the backdrop of documented concerns raised by police chiefs, fire chiefs, and emergency responders across Lorain County regarding dispatch performance, equipment reliability, and operational responsiveness. These concerns are not ideological. They are not speculative. They are grounded in lived experience and real world incidents that expose system vulnerability.
Public safety infrastructure does not fail in dramatic, cinematic fashion. It fails quietly, through delays, malfunctions, redundancies that are forced to compensate for primary system breakdowns, and uncertainty about whether the right information is reaching the right people at the right time. Those failures are often invisible to the public until something goes wrong.
On November 21, an automated emergency dispatch system failure coincided with a fatal medical emergency involving off duty Sheffield Police Lieutenant Aaron Bober. According to public statements, firefighters were not notified through the primary automated system as expected. Instead, they became aware of the emergency through a redundancy service and then contacted 911 directly to confirm the call. Confirmation occurred one minute and thirty eight seconds after the initial 911 call was placed, after which firefighters responded.
This fact is not cited to assign blame for an outcome. It is not presented to suggest that a different result would necessarily have occurred absent the malfunction. It is cited for a narrower and more important reason: to demonstrate that the system did not function as designed at a moment when reliability mattered most.
When emergency systems fail, even briefly, the margin for error narrows. Seconds are not abstract units of time in public safety operations. They are the difference between immediate action and delayed response. They are the space in which outcomes become harder to influence.
This is why dismissing concerns about dispatch performance as political friction or bureaucratic disagreement is so dangerous. When chiefs raise issues about equipment reliability, notification protocols, or system integration, they are not engaging in power struggles. They are responding to operational risk.
The presence of redundancy systems does not negate failure. Redundancy exists precisely because failures occur. When redundancy is required to compensate for primary system breakdowns, that is not evidence of resilience. It is evidence of vulnerability that must be addressed.
Public safety governance cannot be conducted as if these concerns are hypothetical or remote. They are immediate and consequential. The individuals raising them are not theorists. They are professionals responsible for deploying personnel into unpredictable and often life threatening situations.
Leadership in this context does not mean asserting control. It means responding to warnings with seriousness rather than defensiveness. It means treating reported failures as signals to investigate, improve, and collaborate, not as inconveniences to be minimized.
When seconds matter, system reliability is not theoretical. It is operational reality.
And when those closest to that reality raise concerns, dismissing them as politics is not leadership. It is abdication.
Committees Without Authority Are Not Collaboration
The commissioners have pointed to the formation of a committee of police and fire chiefs as evidence that they are engaging with public safety leadership and addressing concerns related to the county’s 911 operations. On paper, the creation of a committee sounds collaborative. It suggests dialogue, input, and shared problem solving.
In practice, committees without authority rarely accomplish any of those things.
A committee that lacks decision making power does not resolve systemic issues. It manages perception. It provides a forum for concerns to be expressed without guaranteeing that those concerns will influence outcomes. Such structures often function as containment mechanisms rather than governance tools.
Committees absorb criticism. They do not inherently produce change.
True collaboration is not defined by how many meetings are held or how many voices are invited to speak. It is defined by whether those voices have the ability to shape decisions before they are finalized. Consultation that occurs after decisions are made is not shared governance. It is notification.
This distinction matters because public safety operations do not benefit from symbolic inclusion. Police and fire chiefs are not stakeholders in the abstract. They are operational leaders responsible for deploying personnel, managing risk, and responding to emergencies under conditions where failure carries real consequences. Their input is not advisory window dressing. It is integral to system performance.
When committees are convened without clear authority, timelines, or influence over policy, they tend to follow a familiar pattern. Concerns are raised. Notes are taken. Recommendations are acknowledged. Decisions proceed unchanged. The appearance of engagement is preserved, while accountability is diffused.
That is not collaboration. It is procedural insulation.
If collaboration were truly valued, the sheriff and public safety leaders would have defined roles in shaping standard operating procedures, evaluating dispatch performance, and setting expectations for system reliability. Their involvement would be built into governance structures, not outsourced to committees whose recommendations can be ignored without consequence.
Shared responsibility requires shared authority. Without it, committees become substitutes for engagement rather than expressions of it.
Public safety governance is not improved by creating additional layers between decision makers and operational reality. It is improved by ensuring that those closest to the work have a seat at the table when decisions are made, not merely an opportunity to comment after the fact.
A committee that cannot influence outcomes may calm immediate criticism, but it does nothing to address underlying dysfunction. In systems where seconds matter and failures carry human cost, that distinction is not academic.
Collaboration is not demonstrated by forming committees. It is demonstrated by ceding enough control to make collaboration real.
The Late Post Fits a Larger Pattern
The delayed acknowledgment of National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day cannot be dismissed as a one off oversight. It fits a broader and increasingly familiar pattern in how recognition is handled by the county’s leadership. Moments that matter deeply to first responders and veterans are often missed entirely, downplayed, or acknowledged only when silence becomes noticeable.
Police Week, Fire Week, EMS Week, Veterans Day, Memorial Day. These are not obscure observances. They are well established, widely recognized, and routinely marked by public institutions that understand the value of consistency and respect. Yet time and again, acknowledgment appears sporadic, delayed, or absent, only to surface selectively when it aligns with political messaging or public relations needs.
That inconsistency is revealing.
When appreciation is genuine, it is planned. It appears early. It sets the tone rather than reacting to it. It does not require reminders, criticism, or internal alarm to materialize. It reflects an organizational culture that treats recognition as a value rather than a task to be completed.
When appreciation is reactive, it arrives late. It appears after questions are raised, after pressure builds, or after someone realizes that the absence of acknowledgment will be noticed. At that point, the message may still be polite, but it no longer carries the weight of intention. It reads as corrective rather than affirmative.
Public officials often underestimate how clearly residents recognize this difference. People who serve in law enforcement, fire, emergency medical services, or the military are especially attuned to whether recognition is authentic or performative. They know the difference between being valued and being managed.
Timing is one of the clearest indicators of priority because it reflects planning. What is planned matters. What is remembered late was not central.
This is why the timing of the post matters beyond symbolism. It aligns with a pattern in which appreciation is expressed inconsistently and often only when politically convenient. That pattern erodes trust, not because any single acknowledgment is imperfect, but because repetition reveals intent.
Timing reveals priorities. And priorities, over time, reveal values.
Words Do Not Outweigh Conduct
This Substack is not about tone, branding, or social media strategy. It is about alignment. It is about whether public statements correspond with actual behavior, and whether expressions of support are reflected in the decisions that follow them.
Words are easy. Conduct is not.
Public officials can issue statements of appreciation in minutes. They can post graphics, draft captions, and invoke the language of respect without altering a single underlying practice. That is why statements alone are a poor measure of leadership. They tell you what officials want to be seen saying, not what they are willing to do.
You cannot say you support first responders while simultaneously battling them administratively. You cannot praise law enforcement while resisting their involvement in systems that directly affect their ability to respond to emergencies. You cannot invoke collaboration while exercising power in ways that make collaboration structurally impossible.
Those contradictions matter because trust is built on consistency. When officials say one thing and do another, the gap between message and action becomes the story. Over time, that gap erodes credibility more effectively than silence ever could.
Leadership is not demonstrated by captions or proclamations. It is demonstrated by choices. It is demonstrated by whether concerns are engaged or dismissed, whether authority is shared or hoarded, and whether listening occurs before conflict escalates into litigation.
Asking the public to trust leadership while refusing to listen to those closest to the work places that trust on a fragile foundation. Police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical personnel experience the consequences of governance decisions in real time. When their concerns are treated as inconveniences or political friction, support becomes performative rather than substantive.
Alignment is the test. When words and conduct reinforce each other, leadership earns credibility. When they diverge, statements of appreciation lose their meaning.
In public service, behavior is not a supplement to messaging. It is the message.
And when behavior contradicts words, the words no longer matter.
Final Thought
Voters should remember not only what public officials say, but when they say it and under what circumstances. Timing is not incidental in public life. It reflects planning, priority, and intent. Words delivered early carry a different meaning than words delivered late, and words offered freely carry a different weight than words offered under pressure.
Patterns matter because isolated moments can be dismissed, but repetition cannot. When recognition is consistently delayed, selective, or reactive, it stops looking like oversight and starts looking like habit. Habits, over time, reveal how power is exercised and whose voices are treated as essential versus expendable.
Power matters because it determines who gets to decide what counts as collaboration, what concerns are taken seriously, and what criticism is absorbed rather than acted upon. When appreciation only appears after pressure mounts or silence becomes uncomfortable, it reveals how little that appreciation mattered when no one was watching and no response was required.
Public trust is not built through statements alone. It is built through consistency, anticipation, and the willingness to act before being prompted. Leadership that waits to be reminded is leadership that is reacting, not leading.
Even as someone who has been openly critical of law enforcement practices and misconduct when warranted, I did not miss the moment. On live video, shortly after 7:45 that morning, I wished the auxiliary officers a happy Law Enforcement Appreciation Day. That acknowledgment did not require approval, internal debate, or pressure. It required only awareness and intention.
That detail matters because it removes the excuse of ideology. Recognition does not depend on being an uncritical supporter of policing as an institution. It depends on whether someone is paying attention and willing to act consistently with the calendar they know exists. If someone known primarily for accountability journalism and public criticism can acknowledge the day on time, the argument that a government office simply overlooked it becomes less persuasive.
This is not about admiration or endorsement. It is about basic recognition. It is about whether appreciation is treated as a matter of habit or an afterthought triggered by optics. The contrast is not between pro police and anti police. It is between intentional conduct and reactive messaging.
Timing does not measure enthusiasm. It measures priority.
This is my opinion. I could be wrong.
But clocks do not negotiate, and timing does not lie.
About the Author
Aaron Knapp is an investigative journalist and public records advocate based in Lorain County, Ohio. He publishes Lorain Politics Unplugged, where his work focuses on public safety governance, transparency in local government, and the use and misuse of public authority. His reporting emphasizes documented timelines, primary source records, and accountability grounded in observable conduct rather than rhetoric.
Knapp is known for filing and litigating public records requests, analyzing local governance structures, and producing long form commentary that examines how power is exercised at the county and municipal level. His work frequently addresses the gap between official messaging and operational reality, particularly in matters affecting public trust and public safety.
Disclosure and Standards Statement
This article is an opinion column based on publicly observable facts, documented timelines, public statements, and reported events. It does not allege criminal conduct and does not assign legal liability to any individual or entity. Where incidents involving loss of life are referenced, they are cited solely for contextual analysis of system performance and public safety governance, not to attribute fault, causation, or responsibility.
The author is not an attorney, and nothing in this article should be construed as legal advice or a legal opinion. References to statutes, agreements, or governance structures are included for informational and analytical purposes only and reflect the author’s understanding as a journalist and public records advocate.
Readers are encouraged to review original source materials, consult qualified professionals where appropriate, and form their own conclusions
About The Author
