How Rochester chaplains help law enforcement do their jobs

Mar. 2—ROCHESTER — George Beech and his wife, Christine, were out shopping at Apache Mall when his phone began to ring.

Beech had heard premonitory police sirens only moments before.

A

shooting had taken place in a parking lot near the Chick-fil-A restaurant

and Savers thrift store off of Broadway Avenue South. A man was critically injured from a gunshot wound. Beech and Christine dropped what they were doing and she drove him to the crime scene.

Four people had witnessed the shooting. The witnesses were in tears, hands shaking. Beech introduced himself as a chaplain and told them he wanted to make sure they were OK.

It's not unusual for witnesses in such circumstances to experience a flood of tears and emotion. Beech doesn't rush things. He lets people defuse emotionally in their own way, on their own time. Beech talked with them for several minutes, making sure they were alright, as they eventually and slowly began to calm down.

"I'm not rushing them to do that," Beech said. "It's on their own time."

Beech also found himself consoling family members of the victim, who would later die at the hospital. They had been in a nearby store. The family asked Beech to pray.

Between five and 10 times a month, members of a chaplains' group called Salt & Light Partners respond to such traumatic incidents.

First formed in January 2021, the group is made up of 16 chaplains representing 11 churches in the Rochester area. Their job is to be on call and respond to such critical incidents when called by law enforcement.

Much like an EMT unit whose job is to provide immediate, life-saving care, Salt & Light chaplains exist to stanch the emotional bleeding in a person suffering from intense trauma and grief.

Chaplains call the process "triage counseling" or "defusing." The more technical term is called Critical Incident Stress Management. And studies have shown, Beech said, that such interventions, if provided within hours of a traumatic incident, can significantly reduce the incidences of post-traumatic stress.

"It's the equivalent of a combat medic," Beech said. "If they are wounded, you stop the bleeding. That's what chaplains do."

Salt & Light focuses on three primary constituencies in its work: first responders and law enforcement, their families and citizens who witness or are impacted by a critical incident. The chaplains "walk alongside" first responders and law enforcement, Beech said.

Salt & Light first began working with the Rochester Police Department, then expanded to cover the Rochester Fire Department and Olmsted County Sheriff's Office. This year, it branched out again to include the Winona Area Ambulance Service.

Rochester Police Chief Jim Franklin, who asked Beech to start the program back in 2019, said the average cop will experience anywhere from 300 to 400 traumatic events over a 25-year career, whereas the average citizen will experience two or three in their lifetime.

In the course of a year, Rochester police will be called upon to handle hundreds of traffic crashes with injuries, thousands of medical and mental health crisis situations and scores of death investigations, some of which are suicides.

"What that means is that the cops have to process each and every one of those scenes and the toll that it takes on you," Franklin said.

That pressure bleeds into private life, relationships and marriage. Law enforcement members have a higher divorce rate than society at large. A significant percentage of police officers will retire with some form of PTSD.

Law enforcement is a job where officers, deputies and first responders consistently deal with trauma and tragedy, crisis and chaos. Officers are trained to suppress their fears and anxieties so they can do their jobs effectively. But that ability at maintaining self-control in a crisis situation can come at a cost.

"It's a wonderful gift that's necessary at work," Franklin said. "The problem is that it doesn't necessarily translate when you're off duty and you're with your family. We as a profession are just getting to the point where it's OK to talk about this."

It is up to the discretion of a first responder or law enforcement officer supervising an incident scene to decide whether to call a chaplain. But the incident invariably involves a death. It can be a bad traffic accident, an infant death, a suicide.

People in law enforcement or first responders process traumatic incidents in different ways. Many are not traumatized or impacted by traumatic incidents at all. But sometimes, something specific can trigger an emotional reaction. Perhaps the person who died by suicide bore a resemblance to their father. Maybe the first responder to an incident involving an infant death is a new father.

The group's self-imposed deadline is to get to the scene within 20 minutes of the call during the day and a half an hour at night.

There have been incidents, such as a bad car crash, where representatives of Rochester police, the Olmsted County Sheriff's department and first responders have all arrived at the scene. Then family members start showing up. A call is made to request chaplains to help.

"We first make sure that the first responders are OK," Beech said. "We look them in the eye, and we know them. Sometimes, they're OK and sometimes they're not. If they're not, we stop and take care of them because if they're not good emotionally, they can't do their job."

Beech said a key part of the chaplains' work — the foundational part really — is building relationships with first responders and law enforcement. It can start simply as a cup of coffee together or hanging out in the break room or sharing a conversation. If there is no relationship, no trust, the chaplains can't do their work.

Chaplains understand that cops don't have a lot of time on their hands. Chaplains will check in with officers at the police station with the purpose of being available but unobtrusive. If an officer is busy, the chaplain will leave him or her alone. The chaplain's presence, though, creates an opportunity, an invitation for a struggling officer to unburden himself. Sometimes, an officer will wave a chaplain in. The door will be shut, and a conversation will ensue.

"The most important thing I can do in that moment is to be able to share that time with them and get them to unload something that's on their mind," Beech said. "Sometimes they want advice. Sometimes they want somebody to sit and listen."

Franklin said the talks police officers have with the chaplains is strictly confidential. He does not know when they happen or what is talked about. But he knows the program helps. Officers have told him so.

"I've had cops tell me personally that they've talked to a chaplain, and it's been helpful to them," Franklin said.

The list of qualifications to be Salt & Light chaplains is not long. They need to be a pastor or a seminarian and have five years of counseling experience.

Although pastors are called by the nature of their work to be empathetic and compassionate, not everyone is cut out for such work. Beech has interviewed more than 60 people for a chaplain's post. Salt & Light has 16 chaplains.

Some come to realize that the commitment is too much. Some may have misconception of what the work entails.

"They think they want to work with cops — do something that's really exciting, and I'm like, 'That's not why we do this,'" Beech said.

It didn't take long for area law enforcement to buy into the ministry. On the first day the initiative was announced by Jim Franklin, Beech got a call from police that same day. A man was threatening to kill himself and help was needed immediately.

The man's wife was with police trying unsuccessfully to reach her husband. She didn't know where he was. He was not answering the phone. So Beech was given the man's phone number. They asked him to try.

"I got a hold of him. And, of course, I had this rush: Now what?" Beech said.

The two began to talk.

"I was able to talk to him in such a way that he was listening to me, and I was listening to him. He was feeling heard," Beech said.

The man told Beech where he was. Beech was soon texting a police officer with information about the man's whereabouts. Police were there within minutes along with a social worker. Disaster was averted. The man ended up getting the help he needed.

"If you put a chaplain and law enforcement and social worker in a crisis situation, there's no problem you can't solve together," he said.