January 8, 2025
by Carla Hay
Culture Representation: The documentary series “Ozark Law” features a predominantly white group of people (with a few black people, Latin people and Asians) who are connected in some way to law enforcement in Missouri’s Ozark area.
Culture Clash: Law enforcement officials deal with various people for real or perceived law violations.
Culture Audience: “Ozark Law” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in low-budget true crime docuseries that show how law enforcement works in a specific region of the United States.
“Ozark Law” follows the same template that originated with the docuseries “Cops.” The good news is a variety of arrests and law enforcement interactions are featured. The bad news is “Ozark Law” might over-rely on showing intoxicated people in trouble. It’s common knowledge that many people get arrested while intoxicated, but when a show about law enforcement focuses too much on intoxicated people making fools out of themselves before getting arrested, it becomes a bit tiresome and could turn into exploitation. When intoxicated people sign release forms for this footage to be shown on TV, they’re not signing these legal documents when they’re in their right minds.
“Ozark Law” has the expected captioned statements that people who are seen being arrested on the show are innocent until proven guilty, and charges could be reduced or dropped. With few exceptions, “Ozark Law” describes the legal outcomes of the arrests as “pending.” The show does not reveal the names of the people who are seen interacting with law enforcement in each episode. Some of the people have their faces blurred, which usually means they did not sign a release form to allow “Ozark Law” to reveal their faces on TV.
“Ozark Law” is produced by Lucky 8 for A&E. Only the first episode of the series was available for review before the series premiere. In this episode, titled “Welcome to the Lake,” a caption explains that Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri has a population of about 6,993 people for nine months out of the year. But during the summer tourist season, the area gets millions of visitors, totaling more than 5 million a year.
“Welcome to the Lake” chronicles the Fourth of July 2024 weekend activities of law enforcement officials from two agencies: The Lake Ozark Police Department (LOPD) and the nearby Osage Beach Police Department (OBPD). It’s the first fourth of July weekend for LOPD chief James Boren in his new position as chief. Boren is seen briefly in the beginning of the episode and then isn’t seen again for most of the rest of the episode.
Instead, most of this episode consists of cops patrolling the streets during the day and night. At night (where the show has montages of crowds of people on the streets), most of what the cops have to deal with are responses to suspected crimes that are usually committed under the influence of alcohol and/or drugs. Office Tyler Shepherd arrests a young man who was reported as a trespasser at Marty Byrde’s, a gastropub named after the character played by Jason Bateman in Netflix’s “Ozark” series. The man gets arrested after a breathalyzer test shows that he has a blood alcohol level of .206, when the legal limit in Missouri is .08.
Sergeant Bobby McCrorey and Officer Kale Keagy of the OBPD respond to a possible driving-under-the-influence (DUI) incident at night, after a barefoot woman gets into a single-car accident that damaged the front of her car. She insists that she’s not drunk, even though she slurs her words and fails a field sobriety test. It turns out that her intoxication could have come from pills, since she confessions to possession of an unnamed drug in pill form that she has stashed in her car.
Officer Angel Macormic, who says she’s the only female officer in the LOPD, comments during a daytime patrol drive that she likes being treated like one of the guys. However, the only task she’s seen doing in this episode is the easiest task of the episode: She calls a tow truck to take away a Chevy Tahoe because it was illegally parked in a Marty Byrde’s parking space for disabled drivers.
The owner /driver of the car admits that he’s not disabled, but he’s amazed at how quickly his vehicle is being towed. Officer Macormic says that it’s because someone called the police department to report a car was illegally parked. It makes you wonder if whoever called the police knew that TV cameras would be there too, maybe to give Marty Byrde’s some extra publicity.
The episode gets more interesting when it shows something that isn’t the usual arrest for intoxication or a traffic violation. A husband and a wife in Osage Beach have had their home burglarized. Corporal Stephen Riner is the first law enforcement officer to arrive. He interviews the spouses, while Detective Steve Owens shows up later to investigate the scene of the crime.
The spouses are devastated to find out that items stolen from them include a safe containing about $80,000 in cash, jewelry (including the wife’s wedding ring), and a boat. The boat is later found abandoned. The case remained unsolved by the time this episode aired. It’s one of the unfortunate realities of non-fiction shows about law enforcement work.
Unlike many shows about law enforcement on the job, “Ozark Law” attempts to have a sense of humor and wants to show that these law enforcement officers are not always stern and imposing. On a busy night with partiers on the streets, Corporal Isaiah Huff accommodates a young man’s request to do film Huff putting him under a fake arrest to be posted as a joke on social media.
Huff says that this type of interaction is to “establish rapport,” so that if the young man ends up being a witness to any crimes, it will be easier for Huff to get him to cooperate. Huff also says that when law enforcement officers are approachable and friendly to members of the public, it can help change the perception that law enforcement is all about instilling fear or abuse. Huff comments, “It makes us look like we’re not robots. We’re not. We’re normal people.”
This episode of “Ozark Law” has probably two of the most happy-go-lucky people you’ll ever see getting detained on a show of this type. Detective Sergeant Mark Kardula of the LOPD stops to assist a woman whose car ran out of gas on a freeway. It turns out she’s driving with a revoked license and gets arrested. She cheerfully says she needs to call her parents so that they can bail her out.
Officer Karl Glascock and Officer Tyler Shepherd of the LOPD detain a man for having a broke tail light on his car. He grins like he doesn’t have a care in the world while they run his driver’s license and registration through the system. The cops are suspicious that he might be carrying a weapon because of an unidentified “bulge” underneath his clothes.
But when the detainee allows them to do a body search, the cops find out it’s really just his insulin pump. The detainee’s trousers are unzipped, but he assures the cops that he’s not a pervert exposing himself. The cops believe his story that he just forgot to zip up his trousers because he was in a hurry.
“Ozark Law” falls short (at least in this episode) when it comes to giving more personal insight into the law enforcement officers who are featured. Kardula reveals only a hint of his background when he says he was born in Poland, where he lived for the first seven years of his life. Macormic gives a basic reason for why she wanted to work in law enforcement: “I want to help people.”
Based on this first episode, Kardula appears to have potential to be the show’s breakout star. He can be tough but he also has a side that’s approachable and cracks jokes on the job. There’s a scene where Kardula and a cop co-worker named Matthew Johnson give a friendly breathalyzer test to a woman who is unsure if her blood alcohol limit is safe and legal to drive. Kardula is also seen happily posing for photos with people (usually tourists) who ask.
Dennis Newberry, the mayor of Lake Ozark, is shown in a brief interview clip where he comments on the police department. And what he says sounds like something out of a press release: “They do a great job of protecting our citizens and our community.” “Ozark Law” has plenty of footage showing what these law enforcement officials do on the job, but the series would be better if it also showed more of who these law enforcement officials are as people.
A&E premiered “Ozark Law” on January 8, 2025.