Pastors enlisted to bring comfort in tragedies

At a crime or accident scene, when a victim or family member is traumatized or in pain, Franklin County sheriff’s deputies will be able to turn to clergy members to help them find comfort.

On Monday, a class of seven clergy members will complete their training as the first members of the Police and Clergy Together program, or PACT. They’ll receive their certificates at the sheriff’s training academy in Grove City.

They’ll then work in Prairie, Pleasant, Jackson and Franklin townships in western and southwest Franklin County, the sheriff’s department’s zone that receives the most runs for violent crime.

“Prairie Township was selected because they just ran stats on sheriff’s department zones to see which had the most activities as far as violence,” said the Rev. Nancy Day-Achauer, a member of the program and pastor of St. Mark’s United Methodist Church on Sullivant Avenue in the township. She was surprised to discover that Prairie Township led the way.

The department is looking for the clergy members to provide a calming presence after violence or a tragedy, she said.

They’ll be called in after there’s been a homicide, for example, or an officerinvolved shooting or a fatal crash. They’ll do ride-alongs with deputies twice a year beginning in January.

Areiele Link, the program’s manager for the sheriff’s department, calls it a “pulpit presence.”

Another program participant is the Rev. Javier Rodriguez, a retired pastor from the United Methodist Church who served for 27 years in Ohio, Texas, New Mexico and California. A native of Costa Rica, the 74-year-old Rodriguez said his fluency in Spanish will help with the growing Latino community in the area.

“It’s something that should have been done a long time ago,” he said of the program.

The new program is based on one run by the Dayton Police Department. The program there began in 2012 and now has 45 clergy members, said Chris Pawelski, that department’s community engagement officer.

“It’s something that should have been done a long time ago.”

— The Rev. Javier Rodriguez

Dayton modeled its program after one in Fort Worth, Texas, Pawelski said. The Dayton group rides along with police once a month. Members are also called out to homicides, shootings and suicides.

One of the first call-outs the group had was for the death of a 12-year-old boy. The family was distraught and two clergy members were sent to help as best they could.

“It’s been a huge asset for us,” said Pawelski, who estimates that clergy members are sent out about once a month. Franklin County Sheriff Dallas Baldwin said his brother, Laird, is a pastor involved in the Dayton program.

Chief Deputy Jim Gilbert said he can think of 10 to 15 incidents in the past year where pastors could have been helpful, including shootings and overdoses.

The Rev. Leo Connolly, the sheriff department’s chaplain and pastor of St. Cecilia’s Catholic Church on Columbus’ Far West Side, said they’ll see how the program works in this first zone, then see if they can add other areas of the county.

The pastors will not be a part of the investigative team.

“A big part of the training was how not to be a problem, how not to contaminate evidence,” Day-Achauer said. “A lot of it was our own guidance on how to be helpful.”