Public Employee Press

Profiles in Public Service
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A cop’s confidant

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

Police Chaplains like Rabbi Alvin Kass provide refuge for Police Officers who often feel they are victims in a judgmental world where they live under a public microscope.

Assistant Chief Kass heads the Chaplains unit at the Police Dept., where he has worked for over 40 years. The department has seven Catholic, Protestant and Jewish Chaplains, and is now trying to fill an opening for a Chaplain of the Muslim faith. Years ago, Kass was the leading advocate for bringing Chaplains into DC 37’s Local 299.

“A great part of my work is counseling face-to-face, interacting with Police Officers, who have a tremendously stressful calling,” Kass said.

“Whatever is told to us remains absolutely confidential,” he said. “Our first duty is to the Officers. If they weren’t confident that what they say would not go any further, they wouldn’t talk to us.”

By listening sympathetically and offering advice, Kass helps Police Officers deal with workplace conflict, marital troubles, alcoholism, the serious illness or death of a family member or the anguish stemming from a shooting. Perhaps most important, like the other Chaplains, Kass is simply a friend.

He understands why some people think Officers adopt an “us against the world” perspective. They risk their lives every day as they carry out their duty to enforce the law in a community of 8 million people who are quick to question their judgment.

“We cope with emergencies 24/7,” Kass said. “If a cop is shot or killed, we respond to the scene.” One of his fondest memories concerns a Police Officer who decided to study as a way of coping with the death of his young boy and later told Kass that the educational experience with him had transformed his life.

Despite his vast experience, he finds cop shootings personally traumatic events that are impossible to treat with clinical detachment. Nearly six years after 9/11, Kass still has painful memories of consoling the families of the department’s victims.

“When a cop is injured,” Kass said, “we talk to the cop and family. When a cop is killed, it’s the most difficult assignment a Chaplain can ever have. The experience takes so much out of you that I have problems functioning for days.”

Kass earned a master’s degree in history at Columbia University and a doctorate in philosophy from New York University. After studying at the Jewish Theological Seminary, he was ordained a rabbi in 1962 and served as a Chaplain in the U.S. Air Force before joining the NYPD.