AAPO was proud to announce the appointment of Dr. David Fair to serve on our National Advisory Council. Dr. Fair is a renowned crisis intervention and stress management specialist for emergency responders. He is the director of chaplain services with Brownwood Police Department, Texas Dept. of Public Safety’s Critical Incident Response Team, and the Texas Dept. of Health’s Critical Incident Stress Management Network.

As a founding principal of Crisis Response Chaplains Service, Dr. Fair consults with peers, agencies and individuals nationwide.

Dr. Fair has been lending his considerable talents to AAPO’s OFFICER-DOWN CRISIS RESPONSE program and will be a guiding force as AAPO continues to provide related services to the law enforcement community. Once again, David answers the call to serve others

CALLED TO SERVE: A CHAPLAIN’S STORY

Called in the 1980s to serve both his Lord and his fellow man, he earned a doctorate in Religious Ministry and joined the Brownwood, Texas Police Department as a police chaplain. Inspired to partner more effectively, he paid his own way to become a commissioned peace officer himself in 1994. Called to assist those who tended disaster detail at the scenes of infamous calamities, he became a noted navigator of the road to recovery from traumatic stress.

His resume brims with the requisite professional certifications, formal licenses, academic attainments and inter-disciplinary pursuits. Springing from the words on the page are references to such infamous milestones as the Killeen cafeteria massacre, Ground Zero and the Columbia debris fields. Dr. Fair was there, r escuing the rescuers, helping the recoverers to recover. 

Police chaplains fill a significant niche in a field where tragedy, trauma and death are frequent obstacles on the landscape. In general, departmental chaplains have a formal religious affiliation, a pastoral endorsement, and are credentialed by the International Conference of Police Chaplains (ICPC). Among the 2,800 chaplains in 16 countries certified by the ICPC, Dr. Fair is one of 115 (4%) certified at the highest level of Master Chaplain. Most law enforcement chaplains pursue a life-long regimen of continuing education in various fields of psychology and sociology. About 15%, including Dr. Fair, are also licensed peace officers.

Individual departments can establish their own criteria, provided that they meet the Lemon test. No, it’s nothing to do with the quality of their transportation; it’s a reference to the 1971 Supreme Court decision, Lemon vs. Kurtzman, defining the parameters for police chaplain duties to be acceptable under the court’s “separation of church and state” doctrines.

“Psychological support is the essential element,” says Dr. Fair. “If we are asked about spiritual issues, then of course, we are allowed to answer and get into a dialogue, but we have to wait for the question to be asked. (The job functions) have to be ecumenical in nature and you have to be able to serve people of any faith, or of no faith.” In a nutshell, Dr. Fair provides what he calls “psychological first aid.”

“A police chaplain serves on two fronts,” he elaborates. “We provide chaplain services for police officers, civilian employees of a department, and police officers’ families. This includes serving at a wedding, a funeral and in cases where there is a death in the family.”

“The other side is working with victims and people in the field that the officers come in contact with. Chaplains do death notifications. We provide counseling on family violence calls, and assist in cases of sexual assault, missing children, kidnappings and so on. We also frequently serve as a negotiator or a reference person for suicide prevention and intervention, and cases where there is a hostage or a barricaded subject. Chaplains attend almost every death scene that law enforcement is called to.”