When the Clay County Sheriff’s Department found itself in a crisis situation recently, the Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) team was able to step in and offer support to officers and members of the Lineville community.
A violent incident between a sheriff’s deputy and a local minister left the community in shock. Pastor Curtis Watts — reportedly on medication — chopped off the hand of Sgt. Jason Freeman with a bush ax and was killed on the scene by officers.
Since then, Freeman’s hand has been reattached and continues to heal and the community has grieved and attempted to make sense of the tragedy.
Enter the CISM team, created just for situations such as this.
“We wore our disaster relief shirts and hats and IDs,” said Ray Baker, a member of the team that visited Lineville the second weekend in October. “The members of the community began to tell us how they felt, whether they were angry or confused. … We wanted to hear how they felt about what happened. If they bottle it up, it’s like a volcano and might come out in other ways.”
Baker, who has a background in law enforcement, said listening is the most important quality a CISM team member can possess, second only to caring for others.
Currently about 200 people are trained crisis chaplains through CISM, and they can truly be a calming, helpful presence during times of crisis, according to Joe Bob Mizzell, director of chaplaincy ministries for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM).
“It makes a tremendous difference, because when a chaplain is there, he represents God to them,” Mizzell said. “People feel comfortable telling them what their needs are. We are there for them, and they pick up on that really quickly.”
Although not everyone trained for CISM has experience in law enforcement — teachers, housewives and pastors are among the chaplains — Freeman said the fact that many chaplains are familiar with it was helpful for him.
“Basically most of the chaplains I’ve spoken with were prior law enforcement,” said Freeman, acting team leader of the sheriff’s department’s special response team while the CISM team was in Lineville. “It helps if they know where we’re coming from, what we’re going through and what’s going through our head during that critical incident.”
Even though Baker has been involved in responding to crisis situations like 9/11, he still said it’s extremely important for him to take time to review cases with community leaders.
As follow up to the visit in Lineville, he and members of his team plan to meet with the Clay County sheriff and together evaluate their performance.
“We’ll say, ‘OK, this is what we did. Tell us what was good and what we should have done differently,’” Baker said. “If you don’t review what you did right and wrong, you’re not a strong leader.”
Baker hopes that eventually trained chaplains and law enforcement officers will work together more often and in a more proactive way.
In an ideal world, Baker said, chaplains would be called in before things got violent, acting as a go-between with individuals and police.
“The thing about crisis situations is there will always be another next time.”
For more information about CISM, call Mizzell’s office at the SBOM at 1-800-264-1225, Ext. 315.
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