Chaplains helping those who keep our communities safe
Karina Ioffee
Record Staff Writer
Published Monday, Feb 13, 2006
STOCKTON - An officer never forgets.
Not the 4-month-old baby claimed by sudden infant death syndrome nor the nightmarish accident with the young girl pinned inside her car. An officer doesn't often talk about such things, but the individual could still be haunted by it years later.
In the past, police officers and firefighters led a lonely struggle with work-related stress. But today, police chaplaincy programs are creating a formal way for cops, firefighters and others in public safety to receive counseling after witnessing traumatic events.
Stockton Fire Department Battalion Chief Kim Olson sought out his chaplain following the death of Brett Laws, his 29-year-old nephew and a firefighter who was killed in a 1997 fire. That night claimed the life of another young firefighter when the roof of a midtown home collapsed while they were inside. Their deaths stunned the firefighter community, and Olson found himself reaching out to his pastor, Bob Mitchell.
"Firefighting is a close-knit family, and people were looking for answers," Olson said. "Any time a tragedy strikes a family, you question why something like this happened."
Mitchell was asked to officiate at Laws' funeral, and a partnership began between the Fire Department and Lincoln Presbyterian Church.
Today, four chaplains - three Presbyterian and one Catholic - work with firefighters, paramedics and dispatchers who request counseling after handling a particularly emotional call.
"Just the talking itself is therapeutic," Mitchell said. "Studies have shown that if you bottle it up, it can become very stressful."
The stress often takes a deep toll on emergency responders. Police are twice as likely to kill themselves than be killed in the line of duty and have a higher-than-average divorce rate, said Kevin White, a pastor for Crosstown Community Church and one of 12 chaplains for the Stockton Police Department.
"They work all day long with the worst of Stockton; then they come home and their wife asks them how their day was, but they don't want to talk about it," White said. "A couple of years go by, and they might start to feel that their spouse doesn't understand them."
The chaplaincy program is open to all faiths, and pastors from different churches participate, said Pete Smith, a Stockton police spokesman. At the Lodi Police Department, there is a rabbi to offer a Jewish perspective on grief and healing.
Chaplains' work is often more than counseling. They bring coffee to officers guarding a crime scene and cheeseburgers to the SWAT unit on a long call. And they often extend their services to victims' families as they try to make sense of their loss.
White's first call as police chaplain was to the scene of a grisly car accident downtown involving several teenagers in a stolen car.
One 15-year-old was badly injured, and officers knew she would not make it. White met the family at San Joaquin General Hospital and prayed with them over the girl's bed as she lay dying.
But it is calls involving children that leave a lasting impression on officers, especially if they have children of their own, White said.
Lodi police Capt. Gary Benincasa remembers an incident in which a father fell asleep with his young child, rolled over and suffocated the baby. Benincasa, a 23-year-veteran of the department, walked into the hospital to find the mother holding the dead child.
"She told me, 'Please don't take my baby away,' " he recalled. "How do you forget that? I went home and shed a tear or two and hugged my kids. It still bothers me today."
