Photo by Sarah Finnegan.
Morningstar United Methodist Church pastor Mark Puckett sits with Matt Caicoppo in a police vehicle. Various chaplains will occasionally ride along with deputies to help better understand the jobs police departments do, as well as provide support for the officers and any members of the public they may come across.
The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office has a little known resource, and if residents don’t face a tragic event, they might never know it exists.
The Shelby County Law Enforcement Chaplains Association is a group of Shelby County ministers who work to meet the spiritual and emotional needs of SCSO employees, their families, victims and the families of victims.
The association was formed in the early ’90s after then-Sheriff James Jones got a call informing him that his son died in an automobile accident in Texas.
“Not a very good way to learn of the death of a loved one,” said Capt. Mike DeHart, who serves as the SCSO chaplain liaison. “So he vowed at that time that as long as he had anything to do with it, nobody in Shelby County would learn about the death of a loved one from a phone call.”
Sheriff Jones took on the task of personally delivering death notifications, but as the county grew, so did the number of death notifications and the sheriff’s need for help. Chris Curry, who served as Shelby County sheriff after Jones, helped deliver death notifications for a time.
During the time they shared that responsibility, DeHart said, there was a weekend with a high number of death notifications to deliver, and they realized a change was necessary.
“They realized there was a need here for something more than what we’re doing,” DeHart said. “That and, ‘We need some help,’ quite honestly.”
In 1994, Jones reached out to pastors around the county, and that formed the foundations for the chaplains association.
“That small group started out basically with the purpose of delivering death notifications,” DeHart said. The chaplains would go with deputies to deliver notifications and be there to support the survivors and help establish a support system, but since 1994, those duties have expanded.
The chaplains must have five years of experience as a pastor, be fully ordained and live in the county, among other requirements. They also undergo training from the International Conference of Police Chaplains, arrive on scene for major accidents, go on ride alongs with deputies, act as a community liaison for religious leaders and provide spiritual support for the sheriff’s deputies, as well as other tasks.
“Our job is to help with the officers as a whole, at keeping them whole, and trying out best to provide for them an outlet,” said Donny Acton, senior pastor at New Hope Cumberland Presbyterian. Acton has been with the chaplain’s association since it was formed. “Because critical stress, it can be a chronic thing that builds up over time, and so our job is to be there for them, first and foremost, and secondly to be there for the community.”
By providing a trusted group in which deputies can confide, Acton and Mark Puckett, pastor at Morningstar United Methodist Church, said the chaplains help protect the sheriff’s office’s greatest resource: its people. Deputies deal with high stress situations and oftentimes run from one call to the next without an opportunity to decompress.
“Chaplaincy is about building a relationship with employees so that when they find themselves in a time of crisis, whether that’s dealing with the stress of a job, whether that’s dealing with a family issue or personal issue, then that foundation has already been laid for that employee to reach out to a chaplain and ask for help,” DeHart said.
The chaplains’ training helps them deal with the emotional, physical, psychological and spiritual effects of a high stress position, and the goal of that communication is to allow the officer to have a successful career and to retire from that career enjoying life.
As they work with deputies, Puckett said, the pastors — and their congregations — also benefit.
“Our role is not to proselytize,” Puckett said. “Our role is to be the hands and feet of Jesus, and being part of the things that happen in the community, it’s given us an opportunity when someone has lost something in an accident to be able to provide things we otherwise wouldn’t even know about. You just never know how God’s going to use you to do something through the average call.”
“It opens up avenues of ministry that you otherwise would have never seen,” Acton added, saying that riding in the deputy’s cars and arriving on scene opened his eyes to a lot he otherwise would not have experienced.
“I would tell a minister who spends 30 hours a week preparing a sermon, ‘Go ride six hours with a sheriff’s deputy. You’ll learn more in that time, of the practical aspects of theology, and learn about your community,’” Acton said. “ You get to see the underbelly of society, in a lot of ways, and as a minister too often we’re out of touch.”
Encountering the communities through places and people ministers wouldn’t typically encounter, Acton said, allows them to expand their theological perspective. They can learn more about their communities and also how to minister to more individuals who need it.
Chaplains also work with the community on scene of incidents where emotions run high or there has been death or injury. In these situations, the roles of chaplains and law enforcement officers complement each other.
“If deputies respond to the scene of a crime where someone has died or been killed, or some crime like that where you might already have family members on scene, having a chaplain there to be with the family … it cares for the family members who were there, but it also allows the law enforcement to do their job without being distracted or encumbered by emotional family members or family members with questions,” DeHart said.
While both groups work with people, Acton said, they typically deal with different aspects of a person on the job.
“The firemen on the scene or the policemen on the scene, they have to get in there in situations that are gruesome. I try to stay away from them … they can’t, but I can pull back and be with the family,” Acton said.
Having someone who can handle a family’s emotions while the first responders deal with the scene, DeHart said, helps ensure the human aspect is taken care of, and no part of the job has to be neglected.
The Chaplains Association has also benefited the state, DeHart said, as SCSO hosts a yearly Chaplains Academy that trains according to ICPC’s 12 courses of chaplains. Any interested pastor can reach out to DeHart to find out more information and potentially join the training, he said.
“We’ve touched on some big things, but there’s so many other small things [the chaplains] do,” DeHart said, noting it can range from a coffee shop meeting or donuts at roll call to opening their church for a meal on a holiday. “It’s just so broad and beneficial not only to the officers or deputies themselves, but to their families and to the community as a whole.It’s tremendous.”
