allow hello hello and welcome to the place to so i wear our motto is step out and redesign and the focus is always on you i'm your host anita russell and it's my pleasure to be here once again and as you can see we have a full house  we have a number of guests here and we're going to talk about a very specific topic and that topic is community policing and the role that chaplains play in the trenton police department so i'm going to go do a little round robin here and we're going to start with nathan davis he's a police officer so why don't you tell our audience a little bit more about who you are with thank you for having me i'm glad to be here again my name is nathan davis i am a well and of course i'm still picking up the past of course the first chronicles of the living god ministries also a police trap and it took quite a few things in so i don't think time will allow me to police chaplain excellent excellent so tell me a little bit about this trying to police chaplain and how that worked how did it even come into existence well what happened was back in one thousand two thousand and three that now he is a police officer might how do you guys get involved in the police chaplaincy program wow well good question i saw a television show late one night and it was talking about because i want to do it so about maybe three four years ago maybe we met nate and he was involved in this program called the police chaplain and he was talking about it and also wait a minute i heard about that process that they go to do a background training and making sure that things are good for them on a background because we come in contact with so many families death in crisis especially with children  why is this important while most of the first is well to me is is extremely important and i must tell you why because there's such a lack of communication with police and our residents so this have the bridge between our police and our community we're the ones that get out there and let community know the police is good i mean you have good and bad in everything but you need to the community needs to and the chaplain so that's what we're trying to rebuild back in a city where the cops feel comfortable where they know the names of the residents in our communities and they can reach out to us as chaplains and say  ourselves what we are doing this and in today's time we have not done such a great job in affecting the community as a church so to chaplains like an extinction ok right now in the past when on the minister to go into the community even though we are police chaplain which our first obligation is to police officers and yes ok so again i always have people look at my list of sort o values and then tell me within the context of what you do what are the ones that resonates most with you and so the ones that the ones that you guys select and i have to tell you fav trust and believe is my number about how those values relate to this whole this whole concept of community policing and you're absolutely right we're living in a time now where that gap between law enforcement and the community seems to be getting wider and wider and wider so can you talk about your selection of that particular value community and family from the standpoint of community policing who wants to take it neat  heavily in a community and both have a responsibility the police has a responsibility to the community that is so those that own ministry have a responsibility not just to their parishioners but if your place of worship is in that community you have a responsibility to that community so we have an obligation as being in leadership position in our religious facilities to number one not just give them b spiritual things but every day life things and it starts with the pastors because people look up to people ministry so when you are in ministry people look up to you so what better place to learn the importance of community policing is through the church the church has a big responsibility to the community and wants the pastor is teaching his parishioners that the police officers we need them and they're helping to build th trust and faith in the police when our communities see the police in our communities they won't it won't go negative go positive see now when we see police in our communities it's always negative but we've got to change that dynamic and make it where the police on our bed they have for us so we should be there for them and the only way to ask going to happen the clergy has to get involved and wants to close to get involved now the relationship and the trust will develop among our police so community and families and our families are in trouble yeah and we need the police to help educate not just to come  things that i so i think it's westhampton they have a program that i love and what they do they have our young people you know the young people community they go to the police station and the and they learn things that the police officers do the police officers play games with them they communicate with them they make them feel like oh when i get older i want to do that and that's what we're trying to do as chaplets bring bridge that gap between our community and police exactly because the law is so important sit for about forty minutes came back cussed me out gave me a ticket only wrote me five miles over the speed limit our but my point here is is that the law and order god has placed the law in order in our community to help govern our conversation about what's going on in journalism break with what i found to be our experience as police chaplains you know where at almost every incident that take place we get that call and it makes the police officers job much easier they can focus on the policing port and we can focus on helping that family heal and it bridges the gap it makes the family where they're all upset and w it brings about a calmness and now they can communicate with the police officer i'm just concerned about my loved one because we're that bridge and that's our both thing it and i really think the technique dave was for bringing us at this time is that the faith that i had when this current so many years ago when i actually remember stuff working now being out on the streets and seeing stuff happening especially when we see our young black men getting shot down on the streets yes and once that tape go well and we have their family actually trying to come up on that tape and was at this time a lot of people don't understand as an officer we have a job in our job is first of all we have to protect the individual as lonie and then what happened behind that is that we have a family that is here and so many different names not saying that relationship began to break up and that's what happened what we have lost and what happened you know even with that as an appreciation and i see there's something need to be done you know in the process seeing that needs to be done that's when i realized that when they had touched my heart i had to really do something and we doing is voluntary we don't get paid for this so when we come out and when we still can with these families when this because nine out of ten times if something happened in our city trenton new jersey what happened is that you don't know how many jobs there officer had done been through what he did today probably don't witness a rape you know so many people in the city now is this so wonderful is such a great job is because they give us a great deal the respect specially you know the days where i have what i have is my first responders so again when i get challenges or was there any pushback that you met at the very beginning when you were trying to get this program initiated where i did i did when i first got involved with the child police chaplains at this time was two thousand and thing i can do is put my arm or god on and went out and got these families and bring them in and we start doing the crisis in the branches start on a counseling start directing these families to get help mentally physically  spiritually to help these families as well as their officer because this is a happen on a sunday when well it is in was so important that when we out there as an officer we seen so much stuff and then now when you have four different families actually was five different families one of the gentlemen there did he he was in a van also so just speaking on air in general we have like five different families  because i have you know wonderful you know coworkers that we work together hand in hand we love forms and we understand what the families go through especially we have i would say seventy five percent of our young black lady's now is you know i dealing with a lot of cases right now that actually have two young ladies out of the state of new jersey trying to get back because they want to a crisis right now so actually i wear two hats now it actually were as they were quickly running out of time but i asked why i ask another question because something in what you were just saying kind of hinted to the fact that when when you think about trauma and you know all of those things associated with charmer that when you look at the officers the police officers they experienced trauma also cournoyer day and so it's part of the role of a chaplain to also meet the needs of the officer when they have experienced a traumatic event something that happened on the street like this example of the people getting shot in the very and everything so i'm just curious like how does that part of it work in terms of the intervention if you well then you would give to the officers from a chaplain perspective so what we do you know as an officer and again i went to ha officer and that's really really important because we have some officers actually go through personal stuff and a life coach and we again they come and talk to us so your response the community know who the chaplain so are and so that is really a great help because like nate said you know our police officers go through something all the time they got it we don't know what they dealt with before they left respects us as chaplains so is this really a great honor to do what we do and at the end of the day all of us chaplains you know we get together after stuff happens we even do it to prevent because i think what i would say is to our community when you see a police officer don't think negative think positive actually go up to him and say hi say how you doing today how's it going it's good to see you in my community and i think that what bridge deck get to because it makes the police officer feel like wow they're accepting that's back into the community to be in the community so i think if we do that and we as chaplains just continue to be that offices and we can you know great deal of respect and so this has been an incredible and credible conversation and i want to thank you the audience for joining us and we will see you next time bye by