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Agreat story of response, of pastoral care, of crisis ministry, of counseling comes every night, if not more often. There is that much help needed to support
CPD officers in the challenges they presently face that are like none ever known before.
And then there’s this one:
On one of their first tours together, Father Dan and Montelongo heard a call of a fight taking place at a church on the southwest side. They were the first ones on the scene to find a deacon and a pastor going at it. Long story short, the deacon was trying to kick out the pastor, who identified himself as a bishop and had a prior gun charge. “I think that’s the only one that has been God-ordained,” Father Dan cracks.
The job unquestionably takes a sense of humor. Mon- telongo recalls on more than one occasion pulling over a car that turned out be nothing serious. “We’re going to give them a break, and I’ll notice they have a Rosary hanging from the rear-view mirror,” he reveals. “I’ll say to them, ‘If you can tell me what prayer you pray on this bead, I’ll let you go.’ And they are like, ‘uh...uh...uh.’”
No request is too small, whether it’s visiting an officer’s mother at the hospital, taking a copper to chemotherapy as Jackson has done so many times, or being there to pray with the family when somebody is injured on a call. One time, Montelongo was visiting the house of a sergeant who passed away and he wound up mowing the lawn.
Lately, the ministry has been taking some leaps hosting events that inspire unprecedented levels of faith. On this past Valentine’s Day, the chaplains put on a group wed- ding at which one couple tied the knot, and 12 others had their civil marriages blessed.
Two weeks later, Lewis-Davis conceived a “Couples Movie Night” in the atrium at the Police Academy. They had food and child care, and approximately 20 couples
came out to watch “Fireproof” starring Kirk Cameron as a firefighter, who in an attempt to save his marriage, uses a 40-day experiment known as “The Love Dare.” The objec- tive, she said, was to show how first responders must rely on the structure of family.
“There’s the family at home, of course, and the impor- tance of family to the Department,” Lewis-Davis reinforc- es. “Officers spend so much time with each other that just like family they have to learn to rely on each other.”
And then there’s this one that underlines what a police
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CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ MAY 2016 35
Chaplains Joe Jackson, Kimberly Lewis-Davis and Father Dan Brandt blessed several dozen newly-issued CPD stars at the Star Ceremony at the Training and Education Academy on Dec. 10, 2012, including new recruit Jazzy Pedregosa’s in the presence of his wife, Carrie, and their two children.
Chaplain imberly Lewis Da is of ciates o er the wedding of Police Of cer atina atkins and Arthur Lloyd, r. on May , at the E calibur edding Chapel in Las egas.
Chaplains Bob Montelongo, Joe Jackson and Father Dan Brandt at a post on Michigan Avenue the Friday before the NATO Summit in Chicago on May 18, 2012.