Cape CopCast
Welcome to "The Cape CopCast," the official podcast of the Cape Coral Police Department.
Hosted by Officer Mercedes Simonds, and Lisa Greenberg from our Public Affairs team, this podcast dives into the heart of Cape Coral PD's public safety, community initiatives, and the inner workings of our police department. Each episode brings you insightful discussions, interviews with key community figures, and expert advice on safety.
Cape CopCast
Faith Behind the Badge: A Chaplain's Role in Law Enforcement with Dennis Gingerich
Behind every strong police department stands a support system that cares for those who protect and serve. For Cape Coral Police Department, that backbone includes our Chaplaincy program and Lead Chaplain Dennis Gingerich. Gingerich has dedicated nearly three decades to supporting Cape Coral Police officers through their darkest moments and greatest celebrations.
Chaplain Gingerich shares how he transitioned from founding Cape Christian to also becoming the department's longest-serving chaplain. With warmth and wisdom, he explains the delicate balance of providing spiritual support without imposing religious beliefs, emphasizing the chaplaincy program's commitment to confidentiality, non-judgment, and professional integrity. "We serve anyone and everyone," Gingerich explains, highlighting how chaplains create safe spaces for officers to process trauma, stress, and personal challenges.
The conversation unveils powerful stories of transformation, including an officer who was initially against a ride-along but eventually shared a deeply personal trauma about his brother's suicide—something he had never disclosed to anyone else. Through these intimate narratives, Gingerich demonstrates how chaplains help address both immediate trauma and the cumulative stress that builds throughout a law enforcement career. As one officer described it, police work is like "holding a paper sack and throwing rocks into it"—each traumatic event adds weight until something eventually breaks the bag.
The chaplaincy program represents an essential component of officer wellness, recognizing that effective policing requires attention to "body, soul, mind and spirit." Whether conducting ceremonies, responding to critical incidents, or simply being present during roll calls, chaplains like Gingerich, Dr. Don Neace, and Patrick Miller bring diverse life experiences that prepare them to support officers through whatever challenges arise.
Listen now to understand how spiritual care contributes to healthier officers and, ultimately, better community policing.
Welcome back to another episode of the Cape Cop cast. I'm one of your hosts, Public Affairs Officer Lisa Greenberg.
Speaker 2:And I'm Officer Mercedes Simons. Together we make up the Public Affairs Office, and today we have a very special guest. We do, indeed we have one of our favorite chaplains. I say one because we only have three.
Speaker 1:We have three yeah three.
Speaker 2:This is Chaplain Dennis Gingrich.
Speaker 1:You're actually the head chaplain, correct?
Speaker 3:Yes, lead.
Speaker 2:I think they say Lead, chaplain, we love that Tell us a little bit about yourself for the people that don't know.
Speaker 3:Well, I've been around Cape Coral for 39 years, plus over 39 years. I was born and raised in Oregon, plus over 39 years. I was born and raised in Oregon, got my college and seminary education in Virginia and I pastored for seven years in upstate New York before moving to Cape Coral. But I've been here since 1986, came here to start a church and in 1996, came here to start a church and in 1996, when Chief Gibbs was the chief at that time he had come from Miami where they had chaplains in their department and he wanted to start a chaplaincy program and so I was his pastor, pastor for him and his family. And so he said I want you to submit your application. We're going to collect applications. And so I did. I knew I wanted to do something like that.
Speaker 3:I had been a chaplain in a jail in New York for seven years when I was there part-time, more volunteer kind of basis, and I found so much fulfillment in connecting with the correction officers, more so than I felt connecting with the inmates.
Speaker 3:I think that's probably very natural, and I found lots of connection there and I found lots of connection there and so when it came this opportunity, I thought, yeah, I would enjoy that. I would really enjoy that. In fact, maybe there was a part of me that said, if I had a second career, maybe I'd be a cop If I would be never entertained that seriously. But I always just enjoyed what officers and law enforcement did. So I said yes and threw my name in the hat. That's awesome. And there were five of us elected at that time in 1996. And so I was one of five at that point. I'm the only one that remains out of the original five.
Speaker 2:And I'm still around.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's amazing, I still haven't gone anywhere.
Speaker 1:I know we were just talking about how you're coming up on 30 years here at the department I am.
Speaker 3:This is just past the line of 29. And so I'm in my 30th year, and it's been a wonderful 30 years it really has. I've enjoyed so many different components of it and parts of it and been married 50 years now as of last year.
Speaker 3:It was 50 years and we've got three children and, interesting enough, our oldest son works for the Sanibel Police Department. He's in IT. Oh, I didn't know that he's in IT, but he works with the forensic people but also with the data analysis and all the trends and all that kind of stuff. He does that part too. One of our sons is a nurse and our daughter, who's the youngest of the three, is a PA. We've got five grandkids.
Speaker 1:Wow, you're busy. Yeah, so outside of your work here and you also are at a church.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, I started Cape Christian. My wife and I moved here for that purpose 39 years ago. That's why we moved here to Cape Coral.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:So we have you, Dr Don Neese, and then we have Patrick Miller as well, right, there's three of us and I think it's important to recognize that, even though you come from a Christian background, you are kind of like an all-faiths basis on whatever people need. So if somebody isn't, necessarily a Christian, they can still come to you in whatever capacity. I think you all act as a counselor as well, which is really cool.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, what they can expect from us as chaplains and all of us are committed in the same way is a non-judgmental listening ear. Number one Just absolute confidentiality. That is like core to everything that we do, and always to act with professionalism in all kinds of ways and just with integrity. I mean, I think that's what we built the chaplaincy on, we can't have it any other way. So that's the core foundation and that doesn't have any faith boundaries, that doesn't have any religious boundaries as to who we serve. We serve anyone and everyone, and people need a listening ear. They need that. They need confidentiality, somebody they can trust, somebody they can, you know, share what's going on in their lives or whatever Be personal, family, work-related, any number of things. We've kind of seen it all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the three of you. Basically, if someone needs someone to turn to, whether it's to pray with them, whether it's just to be listening ear, just to bounce ideas off of, or whatever it is, they can contact you and you're available for that.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, absolutely. You know we've over the years it's a lot of personal connection and relationship, people reaching out. There's a lot of that. Sometimes there's call-outs that come from the command staff or the top of the communications department or whatever In the case of maybe an officer-involved shooting or an officer injury or something like that. So you know we go to do hospital visits, we do whatever. One of the big joys I've had is doing quite a few officer weddings here in the department over the years. Over the years We've of course had the sad occasions to do families or officer deaths and do funerals and that sort of thing. But you know we're privileged communicators, as Florida statute has a place for that, for clergy as well as attorneys, for sharing privileged communication and so forth. That then isn't going to get brought into court or anything. It's somebody that an officer can trust that it's not going to come back to bite them later what they've told them and just to provide compassionate, caring as I said earlier, listening ear.
Speaker 1:But for matters of stress, for matters of trauma, and I know you guys always are involved in any kind of ceremony that we do. We do swearing-ins we do promotionals, retirements, those types of things. You guys are involved and you say a prayer for that person or that group of people.
Speaker 3:Right, more the formal, ceremonial type things. Yes, we do that on a regular basis here and sometimes we're not as consistent always in getting to roll calls and so on. But sometimes we might pray for the officers before they go out on their shift at roll calls as well. That would be more the informal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's really nice.
Speaker 3:You know, sometimes it's a family member that comes to us reaching out. We've had spouses, we've had others come to us and say hey, we're experiencing some challenges in our family, in our home, can you be of help? We've seen that Sometimes it's command staff who reaches out and says we've got some officer you know, we've got a specific situation officer struggling in their life, personally or in something work-related or non-work-related. Could you reach out? Would you reach out? And so that's involved, everything from a phone call kind of conversation, an offer to set up a meeting, or I've been, it's been in situations where that I've come in and done a ride-along with that officer, nice.
Speaker 3:And I remember one occasion, an officer that's long since retired but I just remember. You know he never, never wanted any ride-alongs to go with him ever, and so I remember in fact it was at the old station before this building was built. You know like he looked at me when we walked out of the car and he was so upset that the command watch commander had assigned him a ride along and he said did somebody put you up to this? And before we even got in the car and I said yes, I said you got people that care for you and I don't know what's going on in your life. Your commander did not tell me what's going on.
Speaker 3:I just know he felt there was a need in some way and I just want you to know. I'm riding along tonight. I'm just available. You don't have to tell me what's going on. You don't have to talk to me about it. I'm not going to ask you any questions about it. But if you want to talk to me, this is the time, because it's you and I for the next six or eight hours and, interesting enough, didn't talk about it for the next six or eight hours, you know.
Speaker 3:And interesting enough, you know, didn't talk about it for the first couple hours. But then he started talking about it and telling me about it. And it does, you know, a family connection thing and a whole bunch of stuff. And you know that officer became one of my greatest friends. From that point on he would update me on the situation every time I'd see him. The guy who didn't want me in his car would become one of the ones who would just I don't know what I said that was helpful to him, gave him a different perspective, listened to him, helped him to think about a couple of things from a different perspective. Every time I saw him after he retired it was always the warmest kind of greeting you could ever imagine. But it was all because a supervisor said you're going to do this because this guy's struggling right now.
Speaker 3:And they were concerned about him, so that's awesome though it's proof that what you do is important.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask you, you know, why is it so important for a police department like ours to have a chaplaincy program?
Speaker 3:Well, I think, lisa, it's really a part of the bigger picture of the culture that we want around here and the culture that the chief is trying to to promote, of wholeness, wellness and thinking about more than just the job, thinking about the people that are serving in really rather difficult circumstances, oftentimes extremely difficult circumstances and all the stress and trauma is way higher than the average person that a police officer has to encounter and to go through and so to care about them as whole people, because we are body, soul, mind and spirit. We are all of those things and you can't separate out one from the other. We try to sometimes think, oh, it's just a physical thing or it's's just no, our emotions are connected, everything's connected to all of those things. We are missing a significant part of a whole well-balanced police force and support staff and everyone else that is doing well in all of their lives, not just while they're here for 12 hours or eight hours or whatever it happens to be in their case, and that's so very important.
Speaker 3:And there's tons of scientific evidence that shows even the spiritual part of life matters. It matters Stress. There's plenty of connections that have been done, studies that have been done by secular organizations where prayer has shown that there's a physical result in reduction of stress and health and heart rates. I mean there's stuff that people that worship regularly, go to a place of worship in some way or another actually live longer. They've done studies. By the way they live, they have a longer, healthier life because of all of the other implications that that brings into their lives. So there's lots of reasons to include the spiritual part of someone who represents a spiritual community. But we're more than that. I mean I have an undergraduate degree in social work as well and we have some training in counseling and things like that as a pastor as a part of our master's program in preparing to be a pastor, and so while I'm not primarily a counselor at all, I refer a lot of people to counselors.
Speaker 3:We're well trained in caring for people and that's really what this is about. Is our department caring for the whole employee and all people?
Speaker 2:We've definitely been a lot more focused on wellness, and I can't think of a single person that their home life doesn't affect their work or their work doesn't affect their home. I think you'd have to be a superhuman.
Speaker 2:Everything bleeds over, so being able to take care of that from every aspect, because we're taught to be physically fit for duty, but we also have a responsibility to be mentally fit for duty, and I think that there's a lot that plays into that. So we appreciate you being here offering that side of things, to make sure that we're also mentally taken care of as well, and just knowing that, hey, I'm not going to force anything on you, but I'm here as a listening ear if you want it.
Speaker 3:You never know the stories, because officers and people in this department have their own personal stories too, and I'll just share one more story.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Both of them retired a long time ago. But I remember being called out in the middle of the night one time by a supervisor. Her words to me were she says we just had some officers involved in a suicide or that were involved. They were trying to stop a suicide and weren't successful in stopping it. And I told one of the officers that was closest to the situation. I told him you're either going to talk to one of our victims' advocates before you go home tonight or a chaplain. You have a choice of one of the two. And he said I'll talk to a of our victims advocates before you go home tonight, or a chaplain. One of the choice. You have a choice, or one of the two. And he said I'll talk to a chaplain. I responded 2 30 in the morning or whatever.
Speaker 3:Ended up standing out in the middle of as I recall it was the median of uh, santa barbara at two o'clock in the morning. There was no traffic back in those days and just listening to him in that moment of he was trying to get this situation stopped. So the guy didn't harm himself. But what? To this day? The supervisor that's long retired since and that officer is retired. What the supervisor did not know was that in that conversation came out a story that had never been told to anyone, and the story was when he was 17, his 15-year-old brother committed suicide and he was home and he always felt blamed for not stopping it and he carried that weight the entire time. Well, that obviously carried into the trauma of this situation of trying to stop this one, but wasn't successful. Yeah, and he never talked about that. That supervisor never knew that. I never went confidentiality, never talked about it. But I can just say how helpful that was for him to process that and talk about that for the very first time. Yep, absolutely.
Speaker 3:In his journey of healing for his own personal trauma now kind of being triggered again by a work-related situation.
Speaker 3:You know for the next 10 years that he was here until he retired. You know that was a special connection always and he talked about a lot of other things in his life in that process and later was involved in an officer. In his last year or two here was an officer involved shooting. He was the first one to want to talk to me and spend time and walking through what had happened that day and his whole response to the situation and everything. And he was one of the first ones to do that because he knew the value that he had created just by processing it with somebody who listened in a nonjudgmental way. That's why we're here and that's what motivates me to spend 30 years doing this. When I see that kind of helping someone in that way, knowing that I've been instrumental in some way to helping them to resolve some things maybe that had never been resolved in their life. That got triggered in a work situation, yeah, but who would have known Exactly?
Speaker 2:That's so cool because there's so much research now within police psychology. They've done so much research about how if you put something in a narrative framework after an event, the sooner after an event the better as far as your emotional response and trauma to that event. But you've been doing that for years and helping people for years. So it's just really cool now, probably after a 30, almost 30-year-long career, to look back and say, hey, we've kind of been doing this for years and it's been working.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, and just what I've watched in that time period too is the cumulative stress. It's not a one-time trauma that you're dealing with, but you can push those aside. You keep on going and you keep on going and you keep on going, but somewhere along the line it accumulates to the point that sometimes there's a breaking point and you don't even realize what caused it.
Speaker 2:I had a sergeant at my old department and he had the best metaphor for it. He's like law enforcement is like you're holding a paper sack and then you're best metaphor for it. He's like law enforcement is like you're you're, you're holding a paper sack and then you're throwing rocks into it. Each rock is like some sort of traumatic event that you might not think it might be a small rock at the time, but over the course of your career can can your paper sack really hold all those rocks? So excellent.
Speaker 1:That's so true, and I think it's important for you know if anyone within that department is watching or listening, to know that they can always come to you. It's not too late. It's never too late. Take the time, Take the opportunity, because you know you want to be able to get these things out before the bag breaks.
Speaker 3:And that's the beautiful thing we all have life experiences and as chaplains us three chaplains also have great life experiences that lend itself. I mean, you know Dr Don Neese is one of the chaplains. He was also a long time inside a prison in Virginia as a chaplain there.
Speaker 3:He's got that side of the thing, but he's been a long time, long time pastor and as pastors we've seen it all and done it all as well, and probably one of the best trainings for this job I ever did was in seminary.
Speaker 3:I went to New York City and we spent a morning in the New York City morgue watching autopsies and seeing how the morgue worked and that was a part of one of the classes I took in seminary. That's weird. And seeing how the morgue worked and that was a part of one of the classes I took in seminary, that's weird. And I'm thinking like have this doctor do an autopsy in front of our eyes and explain to us what was going on, and so on. I thought, man, I can't ever imagine I'd use this. Well, the very first pastor that I had, you know, when I had a 19, 20-some-year-old brother call me and tell me that his sister was in an accident the night before and he was being asked to go to the morgue to identify his 19-year-old sister, I knew exactly what to do. I knew exactly that I was going to go with him to do that and I knew exactly what to expect when I did that that makes sense.
Speaker 3:Or the times when I've been on scenes here. I didn't know what to expect. I kind of know what to expect and all of us, in some way or another, have had that. A pastor, a chaplain, patrick Miller, I mean. He served 20 years as an Army Ranger. That was his career. That's awesome. His second career now is well, he's also a pastor but he's also the ROTC for Lee.
Speaker 3:County, one of the head people in the Lee County School District Office, and that's his background as both a pastor he became a pastor during that time of serving in the Army as a career and so we all have life experiences that have shaped us, I think, to be excellent chaplains and we're not going to be surprised by anything People sometimes separate out on pastor things like live in a pristine little bubble of some sort that has never been impacted by the rest of the world. But I know in our case and that's what we look for in chaplains we look for people who've had real life experience and real life boots on the ground kind of experience to the point that they're not surprised or shocked by humanity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think our department you know you're an integral part all of the chaplains and we're also glad that you could come on the podcast today and sit down with us and help us kind of let the community know what you guys do. Thank you so much for coming on to the Cape Cop cast and we appreciate you and we'll hopefully see you soon at the next swearing in, or I don't know, what's coming down the pike but, that's probably the next thing that we'll see.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I will be around.
Speaker 1:All right Sounds good, and thank you so much for joining us today. We will see you next time.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to the Cape Copcast, where we dive into the heart of the Cape Coral Police Department safety initiatives, community relations and the insightful stories of different officers that make up our department.
Speaker 1:Please like and share our podcast. If you have feedback, you can email capepdpao at capecoralgov. And remember to follow us on social media. Our handle is at Cape PD on all major platforms. Stay safe, stay Cape.
