Article Courtesy of Tippecanoe Gazette – Nancy Bowman
Police officers J.J. Mauro knew as a boy sold him on a career in law enforcement.
The officers – a Boy Scout scoutmaster who worked as an Oakwood policeman and a neighbor two doors down who was on the Dayton police force – caught the young man’s attention with their stories from work. “They always had great stories. They made you laugh, made you cry, made you really put yourself in their shoes. They enjoyed their jobs. I grew up hearing all the police stories,” Mauro said. “Every Mauro and on mom’s side every man worked in factories. They hated it … they had no good stories.” As a student at Northridge High School, Mauro said the career goal wasn’t hard to set.
“I got to thinking about what sounded enjoyable to me: factory or police work?”
More than three decades later, Sgt. Mauro has no doubts he made the right choice. This week, he’s retiring from the Tipp City Police Department after 36 years in law enforcement, all but three with the local department. “You always hear about people becoming police officers because they want to help people. I chose the field because I wanted to have fun and, I have had fun,” he said last week. Mauro attended Sinclair Community College and the University of Dayton before being hired, at the minimum age of 21, for the Randolph Township Police Department in what is now Clayton. He served there three years before being hired in Tipp City in 1978. Mauro worked as a patrol officer for 17 years and was promoted to sergeant in 1996 when a third sergeant position was added. He joined longtime sergeants Gary Gulden and Ron Re, both now retired.
A volunteer fireman in Montgomery County when he joined the police department, Mauro started a fire investigator program “from scratch” after attending arson school. “I joined the (Tipp City) fire department and got the program going so firemen wouldn’t have to wait for a state fire investigator to come (to a fire scene),” he said. The department today has two other fire investigators.
Over the years he became an evidence technician through the Miami Valley Regional Crime Lab and was assigned a special detail to evaluate the different technologies available for an electronic fingerprint system. Today’s systems reduce by hours the process for collecting and filing fingerprints. He also served as a coroner’s investigator for several years while Dr. Judy Nickras was Miami County coroner. After years of working the streets and reading laws the department is charged with enforcing, Mauro became the go-to guy for officers with questions on the job.
“They call me Sgt. Revised Code here … I do know the intricacies of the laws from dealing with them all of the time,” he said.
He hasn’t decided what he’ll do following retirement, but hasn’t ruled out possibly working as the chief at a smaller department. In the meantime, he plans to spend more time with his family. He and his wife, Brenda, take daily walks on area bike trails accompanied by Rocky and Magnum, two miniature dachshunds Mauro refers to as his “boys.” The boys were sitting on his lap at home one morning a few weeks ago when the doorbell rang and a couple officers told him to join them for a ride. They ended up at a restaurant for a lunch with several other officers. “It was such a good feeling. They are not just wanting to scoop me out the door,” Mauro said of his coworkers. “This is the kind of guys I work with here. If you treat them right, they will treat you right.” Like those officers who inspired him decades ago, Mauro said he’s been told he’s influenced others to become police officers.
He also has more than a few police stories of his own to share.
He laughed telling about a fight he and Gulden tried to break up on North Tippecanoe Drive one day. One of the fighters was getting the best of both when they asked a gathering group of bystanders for help. An elderly man with a cane threw it in, grabbed the battling offender and helped restrain him. He choked up a bit as he told of a young girl whose uncle he’d arrested for molesting her. While working traffic near a school, the girl came up, hugged him and told him she loved him. “It gave me a great feeling that I was doing something right,” he said.
