Society Creates Its Own Criminals
Police officers Donald Kopchak and Daniel Lajack were indicted in Medina County on two counts of third-degree felony abduction, one count of fifth-degree felony ethnic intimidation, and a first-degree misdemeanor count of assault due to their commission of a hate crime in Hinckley Township. Lynn Tramonte, Executive Director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, grew up in Medina County. She issued the following statement.
Society creates its own criminals. What does that mean? It means that our culture set the conditions that led two police officers to commit a hate crime against a Black immigrant truck driver in 2024. But in a rare moment of accountability, the men who carried out this act — Donald Kopchak and Daniel Lajack — might face justice. At least today, they are facing prosecution.
Some members of law enforcement and society treat people of color as suspicious for existing in public, while they assume white people are innocent — even when they are the ones who started the fight. We currently live in a country where the president of the United States gathers his power through division. He lies about immigrants to build fear and pit community members against each other, because fear and division is the source of his power.
That is not a healthy way to be. Society creates its own criminals, but it can hold them accountable and try to change. That is why it’s so important that Medina County Prosecutor Forrest Thompson sought and secured an indictment against two police officers, Donald Kopchak and Daniel Lajack, who committed a hate crime against a truck driver at the Buzzards Roost in Hinckley. No one is above the law, including law enforcement professionals.
Thompson said, “This is a victim who is scared to death. This is a victim who thought he was never going to see his unborn child that night for no other reason other than being in a public place and sounding differently. He was afraid he would be killed. And if that doesn’t offend people, I guess I’m overly sensitive. But it offends me.”
It should offend anyone. It did offend witnesses and responding law enforcement. “My gut’s telling me this is totally wrong as a law enforcement officer,” said one. We all have the right to purchase a drink in a bar and not be attacked because of the way we look. That’s what it means to live in a civil society.
Kopchak works for the Cleveland Police. In December 2024, Ohio Immigrant Alliance delivered a letter to Chief Dorothy Todd calling for his dismissal. The letter references “other incidents of improper force.” How many second chances does one man deserve? Lajack worked for Lake County Narcotics Agency at the time he committed this crime, but has since been hired by the Portage County Sheriffs Office. Portage County has a 287(g) agreement with U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) and is assisting in the deportation of Ohioans. Clearly, neither Lajack nor Kopchak should have any role in any immigration enforcement function, much less law enforcement in general.
The public needs to have trust in law enforcement, and Kopchak and Lajack have betrayed that. And instead of believing the lies we hear about immigrants from the administration, we need to believe our experiences. Immigrants are here in Ohio to work, take care of their families, be safe, and live good lives — just like people who were born here. We work in the same places and live in the same towns. We want the same things.
Instead of believing the lies coming out of Washington and from some of our sheriffs — who are profiting off of the mass deportation machine, and don’t care to interrogate whether the people they put in their jails actually belong there — let’s believe our eyes and what we know to be true. A healthy society doesn’t attack people in bars or lock them up in cages for trying to work. Ohio is home for all of us and we are stronger together.
