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CHICAGO LODGE 7
Official Magazine
President’s Report
FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE CHICAGO LODGE #7
EXECUTIVE BOARD
JOHN CATANZARA
President
Michael Mette
First Vice President
Daniel D. Gorman
Second Vice President
Fernando Flores
Third Vice President
Rob Noceda
Recording Secretary
Jim Jakstavich
Financial Secretary
Dennis McGuire
Treasurer
Dean Angelo Sr.
Immediate Past President
Sergeants-at-Arms
Nenad Markovich Frank Quinn III Daniel Sheehan
Trustees
Harold Brown John Capparelli Pablo Claudio Frank J. DiMaria David DiSanti Mark P. Donahue Patrick Duckhorn Tim Fitzpatrick Dan Goetz Ken Hauser Tom Lonergan Brock Merck Steve Olsen Monica Ortiz Dan Quaid Ron Shogren Daniel G. Trevino
Field Representative
Andrew Cantore
A friend indeed
At some point, we all need somebody to lean on, a best friend to keep us from doing something really destructive, to remind us that life is too important to cash in your chips.
Mine came 13 years ago, the first time CPD tried to fire me. I told this story last fall at the National FOP board meeting in Jacksonville. The director of the FOP’s mental health and wellness program had just talked about plans to address the need for more resources and raise awareness about police officer suicide prevention.
It just felt right to share my story with a room full of people, most who did not know who I was at that point. But there were more than 150 people in that room. And you could hear a pin drop when I started telling the story.
I recalled how at that point when they first brought charges against me, I was sit- ting in the house for four dark days, not knowing then what to do with my life. Totally didn’t see it coming. Didn’t watch TV. Didn’t eat. I was literally staring at a blank fucking wall thinking, “What am I going to do with my life?” I really thought about swallowing a jar of pills, going to sleep
and never waking up.
Instead, I turned on the TV and the movie “Bruce Almighty” was on. The mind’s a weird thing,
man. Word association kicks in, and “Bruce Almighty” triggers a thought about a conversation I had with a friend a couple of months before, talking about getting a dog. She told me, “If you get a dog, you should name him Bruce.” I literally turned off my TV, drove to the Chicago Ridge Animal Shelter and adopted Bruce.
That’s Bruce on the cover of this issue. When I walked into the shelter, the whole place was going berserk, dogs barking their heads off. Bruce literally just looked at me, put his ribs up against the cage like, “Rub me, take me home.” Never barked once. I went home with him and he got me through a pretty life-altering time.
After I shared the story that night in Jacksonville, a gentleman came up to me and thanked me be- cause that conference was the first time he had left his house in, like, eight months. He had to come from another state, but he pretty much said, “I have been hiding out in my house.” He told me the work-related story of why, and then he goes, “It’s nice to know other people have those stories.” So again, you might never know whose trajectory you change by sharing a story.
These are the conversations we cannot be afraid to have anymore. We just can’t.
Losing two brother officers who took their own lives last month, along with the many others over the years – and the response to the tragedies from the Department – further shifted Lodge 7’s plans to provide the needed mental health resources into urgency. I don’t think the Department is doing it wrong necessarily. I just think we need to do something better, something more.
First Vice President Mike Mette is leading our initiative to bring that help to members. To let them know there is somebody to talk to in complete confidence. To let them know we have all needed that best friend.
Mike has been through a lot. If you don’t know, he had an incident that caused him to spend a year in prison. Eventually, he won an appeal, the wrongful prosecution was undone and he went back on the job. But that year put Mike through an emotional wringer that would have killed him had he not found somebody to talk to.
Mike and I visited Transformations, an addiction/PTSD treatment center in Florida, when we started our efforts to find resources for members last summer. We were just there to observe, but seeing the guys there – mostly police, military and firefighters – they had to be thinking, “Who the fuck are these guys?” So I just felt the need to tell my story. Then Mike tells his prison story. And you can see the impact it made.
We come at this in a different way than anybody who has ever sat in these chairs here at Lodge 7. That’s why we care. That’s why it matters to me and all of us here. It’s been a driving, reoccurring theme in our conversations of what can we do better, different and more effectively to make sure people don’t have to deal with the things that we’ve dealt with. Or worse.
It’s not a story I can run away from or be afraid of. I don’t even call it uncomfortable anymore. I was uncomfortable sharing it. It’s emotional to share it. But if it’s going to register with somebody or resonate, so be it. But that story is why I have that picture on the cover on the wall of my office.
I’m not afraid to share it, and as I tell this story, I’m choking up. That’s the backstory to the picture.
JOHN CATANZARA
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CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ APRIL 2021 5