February 1999 Volume 80 Number 2 "serving the protectors"
Holy Police Supporters
By Brett Williams

Local clergy were taking a bold and uncertain step when they agreed to join SA’s newly formed police chaplaincy in 1993. From that very beginning, they quickly learnt that neither reverse collars, nor their good intent, would afford them any concessions from police officers.

Rod Dyson has seen Holden Hill police morale plunge to its lowest level ever since his appointment as chaplain in 1997. He says that, amid the tide of change currently sweeping across SAPOL, rank-and-file officers feel uninformed by executive management.

Even middle management, he explains, is bereft of information about officers’ futures and can’t identify those likely to be affected by SAPOL’s attempt to restructure.

“There’s an information gap,” he says, “and that’s causing a lot of tension for people. Some of them are quite severely depressed (and) quite a few feel as if they are no longer valued; that they are a resource that is dispensable.

“Even further than that, they’re being asked to provide an excellent service to the community, but are not being serviced excellently by the police force.

“When people are talking about it (change), they’re quite angry. If they felt much more supported by the organization, they’d do the job a lot better. They’re not feeling supported at the moment.”

But whatever support police officers lack - either on or off duty - Dyson and his chaplain colleagues selflessly fill that breach. They offer themselves as officers’ surrogate supporters.

Some see their unpaid service to police as a natural extension of their ministerial role within the church. Others see it as an opportunity for involvement outside of their church communities, where the tendency for clergy, they admit, is to become inward-looking.

Through their work, chaplains have seen what the civilian world knows little about: the realities of police life. From this encounter, they’ve come to a clear understanding of the brutal nature and sometimes unhealthy demands of police work.

But like anyone from outside the police family, chaplains weren’t simply permitted unchecked entry to the law enforcers’ inner-sanctum - regardless of their wish to serve. And most were wise enough to tread carefully within the intangible bounds of police territory, which cops see as no less sacred than the chaplains’ churches.

“There was initial suspicion,” says Norwood chaplain, Bob George, who feared losing the fight for acceptance. “They didn’t want to stop and engage in any sort of conversation. They gave body signs (which said:) ‘leave alone’.

“It probably took me about nine to 12 months to break through (to a point) where I was accepted. It was just hard work to press through that acceptance threshold.”

Rod Dyson: “Some people wouldn’t talk to me.”		Bob George: “There was initial suspicion.”

Dyson found Holden Hill police equally as “guarded”. “Some people wouldn’t talk to me,” he says. “They would move off very quickly to another area of work. I’m not exactly sure whether that’s because I’m a religious person or whether I’m an outsider.”

Dyson, 45, resolved to “keep on going back”.

Salisbury chaplain, Stephanie Swansson, found that police officers had the tough exterior for which they’re renowned. She admits, however, that her own insecurities helped create a barrier; and she wondered whether she would “cut the grade” as a police chaplain.

But like her colleagues, Swansson, 43, decided to “just keep going”.

Of course, battling for hearts and minds was no new theme to the chaplains. They simply showed police their commitment to help and not harm; to listen and not preach; and, most important, to keep personal information forever secret.

And as battle strategists they succeeded: suspicion subsided and misgivings turned to respect. Acceptance was won.

These holy carers, who sought no reward, were finally seen as firm friends rather than trespassers or potential breakers of confidentiality.

“When people talk about you as ‘their chaplain’,” says George, “you know that you’ve crashed through a threshold; that they kind of own you, (but) in a good sense.

“It’s affirming when they say: ‘Well, you’re one of us.’ That really does wonders for the chaplains, because they feel as though they’re appreciated, wanted and respected.”

As George came to know police and their culture more intimately, he found officers to be very up-front, which he attributed to the nature of their work. He noticed their unwavering eye-to-eye contact and expectation of reciprocal directness.

He appreciated their style of interaction “because you know where you stand”. Police, he discovered, even related to each other with the same assertiveness.

“(It’s) almost as though they bark orders at each other,” he says. “It’s not: ‘Would you mind doing this’, it’s: ‘Do it’. I don’t find that off-putting once you recongnize it for what it is. I just chuckle over it because I see it as part of the culture.”

When Swansson eventually broke through some tough exteriors, she usually found “very welcoming” people inside them.

“It’s hard,” she says. “You’ve got to create a relationship for anything at all to happen. Sometimes that ‘clicks’ and sometimes it doesn’t.”

But senior police chaplain, David Marr, 57, has delighted in the speed with which the chaplaincy has evolved since 1993. He attributes its success to the involvement of “grass-roots people” such as local-level police and union delegates.

“Working with a formal hierarchy and bureaucracy in our own church scene and with our own parishes,” he says, “we fit well into the police organization.”

Today, police consult chaplains on a virtually limitless range of issues. With uncommon willingness, they’ve listened to police officers reveal their private dilemmas with everything from the strain of shiftwork to the agony of marriage breakdown.

Even for their children’s education, some police have asked George for his advice on schooling.

“I have been called in for crisis situations like suicides, complicated marital problems and depression,” he says.

“The frustration of work-related issues is the thing I talk about mostly. In the last 12 months, morale has nose-dived substantially, and I think it’s because of the changes that are being implemented.

“I’m not in a position to make comments, but I’ll let them talk it through so they’ve got it off their chests - and I see that as (having) some value.”

Swansson also regards morale as “low at the moment”. She says that many police feel “left in the dark” over impending change.

“...and they feel as though they’re expected to perform the duties of more than one person,” she says. “To some degree their complaints are justified.”

Swansson and Dyson have also responded to calls for help in the aftermath of police officer deaths. Dyson recalls a 1997 suicide which he says was proof of some police officers’ inability to share issues which are “really agonizing for them”.

The officer’s death, he believes, prompted other police to examine their lives and become mindful of the many crises by which they themselves can be struck. “People really wanted to talk about that,” he says, “it really did concern them.”

Stephanie Swansson: “You’ve got to create a relationship for anything at all to happen.”		David Marr: “The great sense of Aussie mateship isn’t put into practice.”

Dyson laments that neither he, nor those who worked with the officer, could foresee the suicide.

Swansson was acutely affected by the death of a police officer last year - one with whom she’d initially had relationship problems but later came to know “in a special way”.

“I did his funeral and it floored me,” she says. “because I was doing my own grieving as well. It wasn’t just going in there and doing a service - I actually had a friendship with this person, and here I was having to be strong.”

George, 50, has also “been there” for police officers after colleagues’ deaths. But he sees the more casual conversations with officers as the avenue through which he can best ply his craft.

“I don’t go to unload religion,” he says. “My role is just to be there and encourage them in their particular work. Most of my work is not done in a crisis situation but in a general encouraging of people: it’s just going (to the station) to talk; to let them say what they want.

“They will talk about shifts; about the fact that there are no opportunities for promotion; or they might talk about clashes they’ve had with a superior. They (also) talk about family issues.”

So with all that they’ve seen and heard, what do the chaplains see as solutions to the trauma-producing issues for today’s police? Do they believe that SAPOL management must act to make police life less burdensome?

When police managers attended a chaplains’ conference recently, Dyson says they responded angrily to certain issues. He says that in contrast to rank-and-file claims of no consultation, managers stridently asserted that “we are consulting”.

Says Dyson of the exchange: “We have nothing to push. We were hopefully doing them a service by saying: ‘This is how your people are feeling’. What we got really was an ‘us-and-them’ response, rather than: ‘Yes, they are our people - let me hear what you are saying’.

“They need to go to stations and answer questions; to be physically seen; and to hear what people are saying.”

George has been told of management failing to understand the rank and file. He’s not convinced, however, that managers are as uncaring as some suggest. He says the managers with whom he’s so far interacted have been “very sensitive and caring”.

But he recognizes that what he perceives as care and sensitivity doesn’t necessarily translate into “responsible decision-making”.

“I guess the hierarchy could always visit more at a local level,” he says, “but how many hours are there in a day?”

Marr believes that management has genuinely tried to keep the rank and file informed of change through workplace visits and documentation. But now more than ever, he insists, management requires “sound human skills”.

“Perhaps in the past,” he says, “to a lot of our managers that hasn’t been so important.”

In the meantime, Marr and his chaplains simply want cops to survive the perils of police life. And Marr is a strong advocate of police reliance on one another.

“The great sense of Aussie mateship isn’t put into practice,” he laments. “We know that our mates will stick by us if we put up our hands - we often don’t give our true mates the chance. That’s rather sad.”

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