| “Cops
& Clergy is about bringing people together,”
said Woodinville Police Chief Kent Baxter, “about
bringing understanding and trust.”
Chief Baxter and Janine Brown, a King County
Sheriff’s chaplain and Pastor of Woodinville’s
New Life Christian Fellowship, recently launched
a Cops & Clergy program in Woodinville to
build relationships and share information about
crime prevention and public safety. Fourteen
people participated in the first meeting, held
at City Hall on Feb. 15.
Baxter said that Woodinville Police reached
out to local businesses, local schools and various
community groups to address a range of crime
issues.
“I thought to myself, let’s step
it up,” he said. “Churches are a
big part of our community.”
Baxter hopes Cops & Clergy will address
a wide variety of topics, starting with emergency
preparedness. He said he’s always believed
that in the event of a disaster, many people
would go to a local church for help. In fact,
many turned to churches in last year’s
Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.
“Churches stepped forward,” said
Baxter. “Even if the church buildings
themselves were destroyed, faith communities
continued to work.”
Pastor Brown helped with Katrina relief last
December. She witnessed pastors of all denominations
pulling together, and she came back to Woodinville
understanding how important it is to build relationships
now, before a natural disaster, before a crisis.
She said, “The only way a community can
recover from a disaster is with faith communities
and civil servants working together. Not just
one agency can do all the work.”
But to be effective, churches have to be prepared.
According to an informal survey taken by Washington
state’s Voluntary Organizations Active
in Disaster, 80 percent of those surveyed thought
that if a disaster occurred in their area, they
would be able to seek help at a local church.
The survey also found that only 20 percent of
the churches polled would be ready to serve
their communities in that way.
In addition to emergency preparedness, Baxter
would like to address topics such as local crime
trends, physical security, mail and identity
theft, the Citizen Corps, the school assault
in Beslan, Russia, for example.
Brown said that police officers, more than
anyone else, know the needs of a city. They
are out in the community every day.
“As a faith community,” said Brown,
“sometimes we get behind the walls of
our churches and we lose track of the needs
of the community.”
Faith-justice networks have been cropping up
across the country to deal with a wide variety
of area-specific issues such as racial tension,
at-risk youth, domestic violence, identity theft,
victim assistance, crime trends and emergency
preparedness, to name a few.
“You can’t take a model from one
city and apply it to another,” said Brown.
“Each city requires its own model, designed
to fit the needs of that community.”
For now, Woodinville’s Cops & Clergy
is in the “getting to know one another”
stage, said Brown.
She said the group has to decide “what
is the need here, what is the focus, where do
we go from here.”
The Reverend Alex Holt of Woodinville Unitarian
Universalist Church, who participated in the
group’s first meeting, said, “I
feel the Cops and Clergy gatherings are important
because they can help us listen to each others’
authentic concerns for the people we serve.
Clergy and police wear very different uniforms
but they seek to heal troubled people and honor
ethical codes from many traditions.”
Pastor Rick Vinther of Woodinville Community
United Methodist Church, who also attended the
first meeting, is excited about the potential
of a Cops & Clergy program.
Pastor Vinther said, “It is important
because it will increase friendship, partnership
and prayer support for the city and for Chief
Baxter. It will also increase fellowship and
partnership with other community clergy so that
churches could work together effectively to
serve Woodinville. It will allow us to work
together as community leaders to provide forums
for our congregations and the community at large.
As a Christian and as a leader, it will provide
new opportunities to be a witness for Christ
in our community.”=
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