By Christopher Williams,Staff Writer

FMI: To contact Lewiston Police Chaplain Rev. Raymond St. Pierre about police business, call 795-9002 or e-mail him at [email protected]

“I may have to shoot someone.”
Rev. Raymond St. Pierre
Police chaplain wears a collar, but can use deadly force

LEWISTON – The sergeant pointed up. “Can you use one of those?”

Raymond St. Pierre glanced up. He eyed the assault rifle strapped to the ceiling. He recognized it as a Ruger Mini-14.

“Yeah,” he said.

It was his first day on the job. Three hours into the shift.

A man with a gun had barricaded himself in his Auburn home. He was threatening suicide.

A lone police officer was at the scene. He’d radioed for backup.

The sergeant nodded to a bullet-proof vest wedged between the cruiser’s bucket seats. He told St. Pierre to put it on.

He pulled it over his black polo shirt. Sewn on the chest in white thread was the word: “Chaplain.”

The Rev. St. Pierre figured it would happen one day. He just hadn’t expected it so soon.

Standoffs can get nasty in a hurry, he says, recalling the event months later. He had come to the Lewiston Police Department hoping to offer spiritual guidance. It became apparent that, in some cases, he might have to give something more.

“I may have to shoot someone or use deadly force,” he says. The officer he’s riding with might get in trouble. St. Pierre would back him up.

“There’s a certain amount of risks I have to be willing to take,” he says.

That’s the nature of police work. He knows it well. It may be a lot to ask of a church pastor. St. Pierre is used to it.

He was a cop for more than a decade before trading his uniform for a clerical collar.

* * *

St. Pierre has been an ordained minister for eight years. He serves as assistant pastor at the Fellowship of God Church in Brunswick, where he lives.

His job in Lewiston isn’t like church.

He comes here about 20 hours each week. He works nights and weekends. And he’s always a cell phone call away. Anytime. Any place.

At the station, his congregation doesn’t come to hear him preach. He goes to them. And he listens.

“You can’t walk into the police station and start evangelizing,” he says. It doesn’t work. “Just because you’re an ordained minister means nothing to a police officer.”

Many don’t practice organized religion. But they believe in some form of supernatural power, he said. St. Pierre isn’t afraid to allude to biblical passages. It’s all about context, he says.

He knows his limits. He often refers people to professional counselors.

* * *

Since he started in September, he’s counseled the parents of a 4-year-old boy who died in a fire. He comforted the emergency workers who pulled the boy’s limp body from the burning apartment building.

He stood in the driveway explaining to a teenage boy that he couldn’t go home because his father had barricaded himself in their home and had threatened to kill himself.

St. Pierre isn’t here just for the cops. He’s here for whoever needs him. That includes their spouses, firefighters, EMTs, victims, their families, even the bad guys.

He isn’t paid for his efforts. He’s not on staff. Yet, he asked for the job.

Roughly a dozen police departments in Maine have chaplains on their forces, he says. He’d like to see that number go up.

* * *

At 53, he’s on his second marriage. He has three sons. The youngest, 15, is still at home. He wants to be a firefighter.

When St. Pierre wasn’t ministering to his congregants or patrolling Lisbon and Brunswick as a cop, he was wiring people’s homes. He built his electrical contracting business into a six-man operation. It pays the bills.

But it’s not enough. Neither is the church.

He couldn’t stay away from “the brotherhood,” he says. “It’s addicting.”

He knows how hard it is trying to balance police work with family life. The adrenaline rush. The hyper-vigilance. The time it takes – sometimes days – to recover from a traumatic event.

That’s why the military has always had chaplains, he said.

“I can remember hating to go home because my wife was going to give me some problems to deal with and I’d been dealing with people’s problems all day long,” he says. “Police officers don’t make very good husbands.”

Now that he’s nearing retirement age, St. Pierre is asking himself why he’s taking on extra duties and exposing himself to potentially dangerous situations.

Then he smiles and says, “It’s God’s plan.”