Trainings and Events with Officers

One of the best ways to build relationships with the officers is to be in the trenches with them, and not just on ride-alongs. Those opportunities come along in training and on-call-outs for critical incidents that are taking place. Or, when they happen simultaneously.

During one of the Strategic Response Team's (SRT) multi-agency trainings, there was a man who had barricaded himself in his house against a couple of officers who were trying to talk with him at his home. He fired a shot, and that set moving a SRT Machine of a response. Live-training!!

The Bear Cat was mobilized and the whole team poured into the Athlestane area. I had a cooler full of bottles of water in the garage, with a bag of ice in the freezer, ready to go for such an event. I poured the ice in the cooler, loaded it in the car and shot off to respond to the event at the request/approval of the Sheriff.

It was a hot day, and you can see the gear or guys have to wear for such events. They were quite welcoming of the cold water as they were trudging off into the woods to take up positions around the house and in the woods, prepared to do violence if needed if negotiations failed to calm him down and get him to surrender peacefully. ALL ENDED WELL... this time.

Another event had me driving the "Book Mobile" Command Center out to a residence in the county where about 20 sticks worth of about 50 year old dynamite was found in a barn-seeping nitro glycerin into the fragile plastic bag wrapped around the explosives.

I was tasked with driving the CC, purchasing sandwiches and brought the cooler of waters again to the scene as the fire agencies sprayed down the area with water-another hot, dry day-and the Brown County Bomb Squad came to pre-emptively "blow up" the seeping unstable nitro before it took out the barn, the next barn, the house, and all the trees within about 200 feet of the explosives that were laying on a rickety metal shelf that was leaning against the barn wall-falling apart.

The owners of the residence stayed with me around the CC as the officers and firemen did a wonderful job at taking care of the explosives. They only lost the barn, but the other barn and the house were saved.

Many form the multiple agencies told me goodbye as they left, saying their thanks for the refreshments and the care shown to them as they did what they needed to do. Some learning for the first time that it's actually good to have Chaplains around.

Please pray for the opportunities I have to provide assistance to the officers in such events and to community members who are fearful, experiencing loss, or, in this case, fearful of experiencing loss.

PRAISE: Culligan donated a pallet of 24 cases of bottles of water to the Chaplain Ministry to have on hand to use for such events!!!