COMPASSIONATE NOTIFICATIONS

As a funeral coordinator I have been involved in numerous death notifications. We always prepared ourselves for notifying the surviving spouse and family. We always followed the COPS guidelines of “In Time, In-person, In Plain Language, With Compassion and In Pairs.” However, as I got some experience I became aware that we weren’t treating our own people who were the first to be notified with as much preparation and compassion as we provided for the surviving family. Then I realized that often I had been notified of a death, at times of someone I knew, in a very brusque and abrupt manner. One I didn’t appreciate but didn’t have time to deal with.

 As I would be involved with command and staff officers and chaplains and agency psychologists, those typically part of the notification team, I learned that they were the first to be notified of the death and were often informed in a very abrupt non-compassionate manner. They would get a phone call from a supervisor whose objective was to follow the telephone notification list in the agency manual. The supervisor was involved in a crisis situation and things were chaotic and being “compassionate” was not something he gave a great deal of thought.

 There is a difference between the chief or command officer being called and told, “Chief, John Cooley was just killed in a shoot out.” As compared to,”Chief, it’s difficult for me to tell you but there was a robbery and a shooting and John Cooley was critically wounded. I need to inform you that he died at the scene.” Give the person being notified time to process the information and be emotionally prepared for the information they know is coming. It takes some pre-planning and thought and a few extra seconds but it’s the compassionate thing to do.

 Everyone who is notified or informed of the incident and the death needs to have it done with compassion. This includes the funeral coordinator. In small agencies especially, everyone knows everyone and any notification will be to someone who knows the deceased officer. Regardless of how well or how poorly the crisis is being managed, there is no reason every notification cannot be done with compassion, in time, and in plain language.

 John Cooley

Policefunerals.com