The Pastor Patrol : For LAPD Chaplains, Goal is to ‘Serve Those Who Protect’

Father Jerome L. Cummings, his face a picture of sadness and compassion, stood beside grieving police officers as the trumpeter sounded “Taps” for their slain comrade.

Cummings did not deliver a eulogy. He rarely spoke. But as a chaplain with the Los Angeles Police Department, the priest knew his presence would mean more than words anyway.

“The presence of a chaplain is a spark . . . a symbol of rationality,” the priest said.

Cummings is one of 38 LAPD chaplains who sit through roll calls, join officers on patrol and generally spend a few hours each month at police stations to, as their motto pledges, “serve those who protect and serve.” It’s a little-known but valuable job, police say, that provides officers an outlet or sounding board for personal and professional problems--and sometimes their grief.

Said Rabbi Solomon Rothstein, a chaplain at the Devonshire Division: “They need to know that the general public cares about them.”

Several chaplains attended the services Friday for James Beyea, a rookie officer with the North Hollywood Division who was shot and killed with his own service revolver as he wrestled with a burglary suspect June 7. Cummings, the division’s chaplain, stood by as officers walked up to hug and console Beyea’s partner, Officer Ignacio Gonzalez.

When the service was over, Cummings appeared as spent as some of the officers.

A chaplain’s job usually is not so emotionally taxing. The chaplains, officially listed as reserve officers with the Police Department, are clergy members who take time off from their regular pastoral duties to meet officers and basically make themselves available for anyone who wants to talk.

“They are someone who the officers can talk to in confidence, whether on duty or off duty,” said Sgt. James Miller, reserve officer liaison at the North Hollywood Division. “They have an understanding of what police work is all about.”

And in the macho world of cops and robbers, officers who would shy away from counselors and psychologists will sometimes confide in a rabbi, priest or minister, said the Rev. Jim Adams, chaplain at the West Valley Division. For some officers, counselors are intimidating; clergy members are not. As Rothstein put it: “If you’re macho, you can’t have problems.”

Breaking through the hardened, cynical exteriors of some officers is a lengthy process that requires patience, diligence, tact and time, the three chaplains said. “It might be years before someone approaches you,” said Adams, associate pastor of the Valley View Foursquare Church in Canoga Park.

The chaplains are divided on whether to wear clerical garb at the police station. Those who choose not to say informal dress helps them build rapport. They wear simple department-issue Windbreakers with “chaplain” printed on the front. Others say donning a white collar or formal clothing creates a stronger spiritual presence.

In some police departments, chaplains work with the public alongside officers, sometimes talking potential suicide victims off bridges or comforting survivors of slain family members. But at the huge and sophisticated LAPD, specially trained officers often handle those duties, and department chaplains work principally with officers, said Father Michael McCullough, chairman of the department’s chaplain corps.

The chaplains don’t preach or conduct religious services, McCullough explained. “We try to be there in a ministry of presence,” he said. The chaplains attend at least two roll calls a month, meet with other chaplains for four training sessions a year and receive $15 a month for their efforts.

The time the chaplains commit to the Police Department varies, depending on each minister’s level of interest and schedule. Adams, who once thought of becoming an officer while a high school student in Simi Valley, puts in a full eight-hour shift each week. Rothstein dashes out of his office at Northridge’s Temple Ramat Zion two or three times a week to attend afternoon roll calls and joins officers as a ride-along when his schedule permits.

It doesn’t take much time, however, to reach the officers, chaplains say. Some of their more moving and heartfelt exchanges with police are but brief moments--a handshake, a knowing glance, a pat on the back. Sometimes words aren’t even necessary, as in the case of one cold and awful night last December that has “burned itself” into Adams’ memory.

Bullets Found Mark

The minister and two officers were on patrol when someone reported a shooting on Variel Avenue about 11 p.m. in Canoga Park. They found a man, his chest ravaged by bullet holes, lying in the street. Tacked on a tree or post nearby was a neighborhood crime watch sign.

Paramedics arrived quickly, but it was too late. “We watched him die,” Adams said.

“They’re used to seeing these kinds of crimes committed,” Adams said of the officers. “But there was an unspoken sense of security just because there was a chaplain there, someone who represents the possibility of life after death.”

Adams said the killing helped him understand how officers can share thoughts with a chaplain that they cannot share elsewhere. Adams and the officers watched the man die together. He understood. How, he asked, could an officer go home after a shift like that and explain it to his wife?

“I didn’t know how to explain it to my wife,” he said.

Occasionally officers will drop by Rothstein’s office or even join Cummings for a beer at the end of a shift. But more often, the officers will ask questions about the events they and the chaplains see together on patrol.

If the officers pick up a drunk or quell a family argument, for example, they might ask about alcohol or family relations. Said Cummings: “So many of the questions that police shoot at me as we’re riding along are along those lines--why do they do this? Why do they do that?”

In some cases it’s clear the officer is looking for insight into his own life and that “he’s got a problem at home with his teen-ager, he’s got a problem at home with his wife, with his in-laws,” Cummings said.

Sometimes, the officers are more direct. “I drank too much last night, padre,” an officer once said. “I think I got a problem drinking.”

But such frankness comes only with time, the chaplains said. At first meeting, officers tend to be extremely polite around clergy members and on several occasions Rothstein has overheard the admonition: “Watch your language, men, the rabbi’s here.”

In time, the officers relax, said Cummings, who lives at St. Bede the Venerable Church in La Canada. “They find out right away you’re not the Messiah,” he said.

Cummings, Rothstein and Adams said their work has given them greater appreciation of police and allowed them to see things most people, let alone the clergy, never see. There was, for example, the night Adams met God on patrol. Or at least the man said he was God.

A few weeks ago, Adams was present when officers caught an escapee from an out-of-state mental institution who identified himself as God and proclaimed that destiny had brought him to Reseda. A psychiatric evaluation team interviewed the man at the West Valley Division.

“He told them he was God,” Adams said.

After the interview, one of the evaluators did a double take when he spotted the chaplain in the hallway. “It’s good thing this guy didn’t get ticked off at you tonight,” he told Adams.

“Why is that?” the minister asked.

“He could have fired you.”