Detroit Police Chaplains

http://www.freep.com/article/20100314/NEWS01/3140430/1318/Police-chaplains-comfort-counsel

The anguish hit hard. Evonne Robinson was making her bed -- the most mundane of tasks -- when her insides tore and she felt the anger rise.




She cried and screamed. She punched the bed and wished she could set her apartment ablaze.

Her son, Antwine Robinson, 32, was dead. He'd been murdered almost a year earlier, but on this random day last December, near the anniversary of his shooting death, that truth finally brought his mother to her knees.

In the midst of her anguish, the telephone rang.

"Ms. Robinson?" The woman's voice was kind but strong. "I want to let you know we haven't forgotten about your son."

The phone call was part of a new Detroit Police Department program that uses volunteer chaplains as liaisons between family members and investigators. Chaplains offer prayer and support and help pass along information to detectives, but their biggest role is to assure loved ones that someone cares.

Three months later, the Rev. Claudia Finley's words that police "didn't forget" about her son's unsolved murder still bring Robinson to tears. "That's all I needed to hear."

Offering to pray
The Rev. Jack Barnett hung up the phone and rested his head in his hands. "I told her I love her, and I do," Barnett said quietly, almost to himself, as he struggled to regain his composure. "Even though I don't know her, I love her -- because she's human."



Barnett had known the phone call he was making would be emotional. The woman on the other end had lost her husband in a Detroit shooting. She wailed when talking about the year since the death. She hasn't slept soundly since, and nightmares plague her.

"I know you're having nightmares," Barnett replied. "I'm calling to let you know that we're working on it. We haven't forgotten you. We're working hard to solve the case."

He offered to pray.

"Heavenly Father," he began, then asked God to give the woman strength to endure the hurt and the pain and to hold tight to her faith.

As he hung up the phone, he took a breath to regroup.

"I held it together, but I almost cried," said Barnett, a pastor at the Bibleway Outreach Full Gospel Church, International in Detroit. Barnett, the chaplain corps' chief, is one of four volunteer chaplains with the Detroit Police Department in charge of placing such calls as part of a new program designed to reach out to families of homicide victims killed in cases that have gone cold.

Armed with notes provided by the investigators on the cases, the four chaplains call loved ones left behind -- often mothers or spouses -- to tell them the case hasn't been forgotten, even if progress seems slow.

The four are among 35 chaplains and seven executive board members with the department's chaplains corps.

Officials with the Florida-based International Conference of Police Chaplains said they didn't know of another department with such a program. The idea was the brainchild of Detroit Police Lt. Dwane Blackmon, who oversees the homicide unit.

"We want to tell people that although the case is not solved, it's not closed," Blackmon said.

Providing counseling, a listening ear
Detroit's chaplain corps was born of strife, launched five years after the 1967 riot that pitted black residents against a largely white police force that was viewed with hostility because of years of heavy-handed -- and often racist -- policing.

The chaplain corps was meant to bridge the divide left behind, recalled the Rev. Ronald Lund, a former chaplain chief.

"We were to mediate between the police and residents," said Lund, 68, who still is a member of the chaplain corps' seven-member executive board. "The clerical collar makes a lot more sense than a blue uniform to families in grief."

Hundreds of police agencies worldwide use chaplains, according to the International Conference of Police Chaplains, which boasts 2,600 members in 20 countries.

Largely, the chaplains offer support and prayer at crime scenes, especially homicides. In signing up as volunteers, they agree to work on-call shifts to ensure someone shows up to every shooting involving a police officer.

Detroit's chaplains also regularly ride along with officers, typically averaging one chaplain on the streets per shift. Blackmon describes them as unsung heroes working quietly behind the scenes. With the hiring of Police Chief Warren Evans last July came an increased push to improve community relations. Blackmon said it seemed natural to ask the chaplains to reach out in cold cases.

"My investigators do not have the time to make those phone calls," Blackmon said, "and we're not suited for that, either. Our job is to look at the facts of the case."

Chaplains are trained to counsel, to listen, he said.

Most families of victims "need some type of counseling," Blackmon said. "They deserve counseling."

Helping when families need it most
The Rev. Claudia Finley, a deputy chief with the chaplains and pastor with By Faith Outreach Ministries in Detroit, was the first to begin placing the phone calls around Christmas.

Evonne Robinson was one of the first people to answer.

Robinson's son, Antwine Robinson, had been shot to death in his home Nov. 15, 2008. The 32-year-old father of two had cleaned up his life after an eight-year stint in prison on a robbery charge, his mother said.

The investigation showed no signs of forced entry, and Evonne Robinson said that $3,000 meant for a car repair was missing from her son's pocket.

His birthday came and went Oct. 13, 2009. Next came the anniversary of his death. Robinson had managed to numb herself for a year, pretending that the son she called her "love child" was simply out of reach. When she missed him most, she replayed a message he'd left on her answering machine just days before his death.

"I just wanted to hear your voice, and I love you," he said. There was a pause before he quickly added in an awkward-son kind of way, "All right, bye."

Grief hit hard one day as the holidays neared.

"It seemed like the world was coming down around me," Robinson said. "I've been through so many stages. I'll be so angry at times; I'll want to tear up some stuff. ... It's like something never closes."

She couldn't turn to friends, she said, because they seemed to want her to move past the grief. She couldn't.

The December day she doubled over, the phone rang. Finley called to say police hadn't forgotten the case.

"It was right on time," Robinson said.

Grieving goes both ways
Though Finley and Barnett deal with Detroit's murderous underbelly every day, they said the phone calls take an emotional toll they weren't expecting.

The outpouring of grief is sometimes paralyzing, said Finley, who broke into tears after a recent call to a woman whose 18-year-old son was gunned down Sept. 17.

The woman didn't answer her phone when it rang Feb. 18. After she listened to Finley's message, she called back and explained she'd been curled up in a ball on her bed crying, asking God for help.

"She said she got my message and it was as if God had answered her prayer, just that quick," Finley said. "She said, 'You're an angel. God sent me an angel.' "

Finley's voice cracked.

"It makes me so humble," she said. "I feel like I'm not worthy."

After talking with the woman for several minutes, Finley promised she would call again on the son's birthday. Then she hung up and burst into tears.

"It's not supposed to get to me," she said as she wiped her face.

It's yet another way that deaths in Detroit touch far more lives than the ones taken, Finley said. She said she hopes that as the program gains footing, victims' families will reach out to chaplains, as well -- not just the other way around.

"I think about how we can't reach some of them" because families move and phone numbers change, she said. "I think about how they're in their homes and they're crying at the anniversary. I want to reach them, too."