When Jeff Halter started college, he was considering engineering, but soon worried it would be too boring. So he switched to law enforcement.
Now retired after 29 years at The Dalles Police Department, Halter’s demeanor might, ironically, lead someone to peg him as an engineer. He’s bright, mechanically inclined, and measured — and not one to tell cop stories.
Most cop stories are also a story about someone’s bad experience that they lived through, he said, and he doesn’t want to infringe on their privacy.
Fellow retired officer Dan Nelson said of Halter, “He’s a contrast to so many of the things you think cops are. Instead, he’s all the things you want cops to be.”
Nelson said Halter’s policing style is “logical, because he’s the smartest man I know. To say he’s extremely logical in his approach would sell short the emotional side he’s able to bring too. He’s very thorough, very methodical, attention to detail. He’s that guy, he’s the guy you want in charge of things.”
Born in Wisconsin, Halter grew up in Cove, Ore., a burg of about 500 souls. After starting college at Oregon Institute of Technology, he transferred to Western Oregon University once he grew keen on law enforcement.
After graduation and a few odd jobs, he landed his first — and only — police job at The Dalles in 1991. He was a detective after just four years, and made sergeant two years after that.
He knew foregoing engineering for law enforcement was a trade off: He’d make less money, but the job would be more varied, interesting and meaningful. And the job has at times proved a bit boring, “but it can be kind of soul crushing in different ways.”
In the early days the job was fun, exciting and admittedly stressful at times. “After awhile though, you see a lot of dysfunctional people,” he said, “and a lot of sad things and a lot of waste. I don’t know.”
As a sergeant, he was required to serve as a deputy medical examiner, responding to deaths. “I have no idea how many deaths or suicides I’ve done. It’s not a job anybody wants to go out and do, but it’s something that needs to be done professionally and with compassion and somebody has to do it.”
He wanted to make a difference, and he recounted a few stories of crime victims who thanked him. With one domestic violence victim in particular, “I felt like I’d done a little something extra that meant something to her.”
His long-planned mid-summer retirement, at age 53, had nothing to do with the Black Lives Matter protests that sprang up after the May 25 police killing of George Floyd.
He thinks the BLM movement has been harder on younger officers. Older ones can remember the time of Rodney King, a man beaten in 1991 by Los Angeles officers, or even local matters, “where all of a sudden everybody that’s a policeman is bad.”
He said, “I think there were a couple of younger officers that were pretty down but along came a couple of families knocking on the door with little kids and they had cookies and cards that said, ‘Thank you, I love you.’ Those kinds of things are more appreciated than the people who do them could ever imagine.”
He added, “I’ve never had so many people stop me in the street to say, ‘Hey, just so you know, we know you’re not like those guys. We support you, we know it’s a hard time.’”
When he watches videos “of officers reacting in certain situations, I wonder, is everyone trying to kill them? But I realize that officer didn’t set out that day intending to do what happened. I wonder what got them in the mindset, what really went wrong there.”
He’s glad for the advent of police body cams. It makes the public behave better and makes police officers be more polite. When he views footage, “I can see exactly who said what with what tone.”
Halter and other officers worked providing traffic control at BLM protests in The Dalles earlier in the summer. “I see my job as protecting people’s rights and people have a right to free speech. I would also hope they are protesting police brutality, which is something I don’t stand for either. As long as you’re not violating people’s rights, you know, or damaging property.”
Halter made it a point to have a non-police social circle to keep himself grounded. “If you formed your opinion of any group of people from what you saw as a police officer, you could have a really dim view of humanity, and I don’t think that’s really healthy.”
Nelson said Halter is a “super humble” person with no need for the spotlight. “He’s cognizant of other people’s feelings and privacy, he doesn’t tell secrets. Extremely caring to fellow co-workers, to people he’s dealt with.”
Nelson recounted how one long-retired officer, Bill Turner, “would talk to someone for an hour if need be to get him in the car without having to fight him. And I never had that kind of patience, but Jeff would’ve spent an entire shift, if need be. He respected people’s dignity. He’s just a top-notch human being.”
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