Serving the Community That Raised Him

As told to the SEI Times by Matt Burkhardt, retired, Indiana State Police

After 34 years with the Indiana State Police, retired trooper Matt Burkhardt looks back on his calling, a small-town beat, and a career he was proud to dedicate to his neighbors.

Every issue, our Citizen Spotlight aims to turn the page over to the neighbors whose work too often goes unrecognized. The people who quietly hold our communities together. This month, we're proud to honor Matt Burkhardt of Lawrenceburg, who retired in January 2026 after 34 years with the Indiana State Police.

For more than three decades, Matt served and protected the communities of Southeast Indiana, answering the kinds of calls most of us will never have to make and carrying the weight of a job he describes as both thankless and impossible to walk away from. A Lawrenceburg native, he policed the same Dearborn County community that raised him, standing watch over neighbors in their hardest moments, sometimes arresting people he'd grown up beside, and showing up, day after day, for a place he never left. His career took him from local back roads all the way to the sidelines of the 2012 Super Bowl in Indianapolis.

We asked Matt to share his story in his own words, and this is what he said…

There have been a lot of "can you believe this happened" moments in my career.

When you grow up in a small community and spend your life policing it, the distance between the people you protect and the people you arrest can get uncomfortably short. There were kids I went to school with who were arrested for murder. One man I graduated with tried to shoot one of my co-workers. I hadn't seen him in 25 years, but I recognized his voice before I ever saw his face.

Not all of those connections were hard ones. Two of my high school buddies ended up serving alongside me on the State Police: Detective Sergeant Kip Main and Trooper Charlie Scarber, who now works for the federal government. Kip and I once spent a night locked inside a prison during a riot. That’s the kind of night you don't forget, and one you can only really share with someone who was standing right beside you.

The job took me places I never expected, too. I worked the 2012 Super Bowl in Indianapolis, and I crossed paths with more familiar faces than I can count at events throughout my career: Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Toby Keith, Trisha Yearwood, the Doobie Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and even Barry Manilow, among many others.

But the people I'll remember most aren't the famous ones. They're the men and women I worked beside every day. I can honestly say they were some of the most dedicated people I've ever known. They worked hard to serve and protect their communities, and they worked just as hard to make sure victims got justice.

Being a cop is a thankless job. It's also one that, once it gets in your blood, is hard to quit. When you put on the badge, you become part of a group of people who put it on the line every single day. We run toward violence while others run away.

That calling comes at a cost. One of the hardest things about the job is that you spend your days dealing with people who aren't making good decisions, in an environment that is relentlessly negative. If you're not careful, that negativity gets into you and wears you down, mentally and physically. They say the average person experiences about eight critical incidents in a lifetime. The average cop sees around 800 over a career. You have to fight to stay positive and to keep seeing the best in people. Negativity is a cancer, and it can ruin a cop's career.

If you're considering a career in law enforcement, here's the advice I'd give you. Understand that most of your contact with the community will come through criminal investigations, civil disputes, traffic enforcement, and crash investigations. Understand that from the day you start, you are always on camera, so act accordingly and carry yourself professionally. You will go to court as a result of doing your job. You will make mistakes, and you will learn from them.

After 34 years, I can say it plainly: I enjoyed being an Indiana State Police officer.