The guy they have in there now is pretty popular. How could you possibly think you could beat him? I used to live in county jurisdiction, until I moved to a city in King County. I filmed KCSO cops when I lived there several times w/o getting hassled. I've got lots of friends in KCSO. On the whole, they like their Sheriff. So, he's popular with the residents and his deputies. I know a few guys who used to work Maricopa County and work here now. They loathe "Sheriff Joe". I have two inlaws who live in MC. Former LEO's here in WA. They think he's a dingdong. They were asked to be part of his "posse" but declined. The Sheriff in KC used to be the dept's Public Information Officer as a Sgt. I thought he was awesome because he was the least politically correct PIO I ever heard. I was amazed by some of the stuff he said and the way he referred to perps and apparently the Sheriff at the time had no problem with him doing that, and the public lapped it up. Total contrast to Seattle's PIO who was extremely PC
The grand jury thing trips me out. Ham sandwiches aside, grand jurys are pretty interesting and fun I to testify in front of, since unlike "normal" (petit) juries, they ask a lot of questions when you are testifying. I was bummed out when I moved here and realized we rarely use grand jurys. In hawaii, I testified on over 120 cases before the GJ. Having informations instead of indictments is definitely weird. GJ's serve a valuable purpose as investigative bodies, in addition to their function as indicters. At least we have inquest juries of a sort when cops kill somebody (big difference here is when citizens kill somebody in self defense they don't go before inquest as a matter of routine (it may happen rarely that I am not aware of , but it's extremely rare if it happens at all) but when a cop kills somebody it per policy always gets the inquest treatment). The inquest jury has no power to indict etc. All it does is act as an investigative body and answer a series of questions posed to it, which helps the prosecutor decide if charges are warranted and also acts as a form of very open govt. to give the public insight into the shooting / killing.
I've testified before death inquests before.
The thing about KC is that they are spread very thin, much thinner than the national average of cops per capita. When you look at the # of cops they have (unlike some sheriffs, they solely act in the patrol sheriff function. they do not run the jail) per capita especially considering the geographic size of the county AND you consider the regional services they provide (they have civil deputies that serve subpoenas, they have a helicopter that serves all nearby agencies not just their own, they have a marine unit that also serves some neighboring agencies in addition to themself, and they have other deputies that serve "sheriff functions" like evictions and such), it becomes apparent they are even thinner than it seems at first glance. Considering that, I think they do a damn good job, and when I lived there I was happy with police service. Just had the understanding that depending on case load, response time could be quite long, especially for a paper detail vs. an in progress detail. When my car got broken into, I just made the report via their computer reporting service instead of waiting for a deputy
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