Chaplain Sworn In To Help Dispatchers

For Wayne (Ind.) police chief Rusty York has sworn in the department’s first chaplain dedicated to helping provide spiritual support for the department’s public safety dispatchers.

Matthew Stultz, 34, graduated from the University of Evansville (Ind.) and has been an area pastor for nine years. He’s certified as a CISM-1 for police chaplaincy and grief counseling. He’s married and has one child.

Stultz admits he hasn’t experienced the stress of dispatching, but is ready to learn. “Everybody reacts to things differently, so there’s really no way to know before I sit down and get to know someone how I can help them.”

Dispatchers answered 734,499 telephone calls in 2007, reporting a full range of incidents.

“One call may be somebody saying, ‘Hey, they didn’t pick up my garbage,’ and then the next one may be a house fire where there’s children trapped,” said center operations manager Susan Rarey.

The most difficult calls to handle emotionally involve the deaths of children, Rarey said. “It’s nice that we can get someone for the dispatchers to be able to talk to.”
Stultz has been a volunteer chaplain with the Marion Police Department, and rode with officers there. “With that training in the background, it was a lot easier to come into Fort Wayne.”

The Fort Wayne police have had a chaplaincy program since the 1970s, and now have eight active volunteers who respond to fatal accidents, homicides and suicides, and also help deliver death notifications.

The chaplaincy program ministers to all faiths, the department said.