Just over a year ago in Brown Deer, a 24-year-old person committed suicide. Though the family was not Jewish, the Brown Deer Police Department placed a telephone call to Rabbi Gil-Ezer (a.k.a. Glenn) Lerer of Temple Menorah.
Why him? Because Lerer is a trained police chaplain. In fact, he is not only head of the Brown Deer Police chaplaincy program, but the only rabbi in all Wisconsin who serves as a police chaplain.
Lerer at the time had recently completed his second chaplaincy training course at a Midwest training seminar run under the auspices of the International Conference of Police Chaplains.
“I had never handled” this sort of situation before, Lerer told The Chronicle in a recent telephone interview, “but I remembered what I had learned.” He was able to “sit and listen and talk” to the family and “give them a little guidance.”
But police chaplains don’t only serve citizens in traumatic stress. Lerer also spoke about a time he helped some Brown Deer officers cope with the aftermath of a sudden infant death syndrome incident.
“You don’t realize what police officers go through,” Lerer said.
Since the Brown Deer Police offered him the opportunity to perform these functions about six years ago, Lerer has become an enthusiastic advocate of the idea of police chaplaincy.
In fact, he and BDP Lieutenant Robert Halverson have organized the first ICPC training seminar to be held in the Milwaukee area. It is scheduled to take place March 23-25 at the Radisson Milwaukee North Shore hotel on Port Washington Rd. in Glendale.
‘A great mitzvah’
“I enjoy [being a police chaplain] because it’s exciting and when you’re able to help somebody immediately, it’s wonderful,” Lerer said. “It’s a great mitzvah, it really is.”
Moreover, “I’ve never met finer people” than the members of the Brown Deer Police, Lerer said. “They are honest and full of integrity, from the chief all the way down.”
And the chaplains’ work is greatly appreciated by police officers, said Halverson. “I can’t tell you how useful our chaplains have been,” he said in a telephone interview.
In dealing with the public, the chaplains are “able to talk to people in ways that we can’t as police officers,” Halverson said. “It frees us up to conduct investigations and do what we need to do for police work.”
Moreover, “when officers are feeling stressed out,” they can approach the chaplain, if they have rapport and trust with that person, and simply talk, said Halverson.
As for Lerer, “he’s been more than helpful” and is “a great guy.… All the officers like him and trust him,” said Halverson. “He has genuine interest in their lives and jobs.”
Lerer said his involvement began when the Brown Deer Police sent an invitation to him and his father, the recently deceased Rabbi Isaac Lerer, to meet with Halverson, Chief Steven Rinzel and other local clergy to organize a chaplaincy program for the Brown Deer Police.
Though no synagogues are located within Brown Deer’s limits, Temple Menorah on 76th St. near Brown Deer Rd. is the closest.
Both rabbis went and the younger Lerer decided to get more involved. “I just liked the chief and the lieutenant and the approach they had,” said Lerer.
He took the Brown Deer Police citizens’ police academy course, but for a long time he was not called for any help.
“But I read things, knew how a police department worked and began to know the officers’ first names,” Lerer said.
Then in 2006, Lerer learned that ICPC was planning to hold a seminar in Beloit. This organization, founded in 1973, is based in Florida and according to its Web site has 2,600 members in 20 nations. It holds regional training seminars as well as a national one every year.
Lerer attended the Beloit seminar and found it “eye-opening. The speakers and the camaraderie were wonderful.”
He took “all the basic classes” to become ICPC certified, including stress management, death notification, suicide, substance abuse, post-shooting trauma, law enforcement injury and death, sensitivity and diversity, legal liability and confidentiality, among others.
He also met some rabbi police chaplains from other states, including a Chabad Lubavitch rabbi from Evanston, Ill.
Lerer became so enthusiastic that at his second seminar in 2007 in Fond du Lac, he proposed having a seminar in the Milwaukee area. The next year’s seminar in Indianapolis authorized it for this year.
When The Chronicle spoke to Lerer last week, about 80 people had registered to attend.
While a number of Wisconsin police forces do have chaplains, many others, including Milwaukee’s, do not, Lerer said.
“I am hoping I can encourage some rabbis from Fox Point, Glendale, wherever” to get involved in this kind of work. “It is a part of the community looking for guidance and assistance” that rabbis could provide “in a wonderful way.”
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