“In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” —Matthew 5:16
“Here’s a story. Funny story,” Delmar Williams said, leaning forward and smiling slightly. “The reason why I joined the police department is because I hated the police.”
Delmar Williams, now a sergeant with the Milwaukee Police Department, shared his story while sitting in the lounge area of the Billy Graham Training Center at The Cove. It’s been a turbulent year for law enforcement officials nationwide, and Milwaukee was no different. The city had an officer-involved shooting in August that triggered peaceful and not-so-peaceful protests.
When the buildings were burning, Williams said, he could see the smoke from his house only five miles away. He could see the helicopters hovering, and at the end of it all, he was so proud that his department never returned fire when as many as 50 bullets were issued in their direction throughout the event.
Crisis-trained chaplains with the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team (RRT) responded to the civil unrest in Milwaukee, and during the deployment, manager Jeff Naber invited Williams to attend the RRT’s National Law Enforcement Retreat. Delmar jumped at the opportunity for spiritual refreshment, and his wife Kalida was excited at the chance to learn more about her husband’s world and how she could support him better. Neither were disappointed, and Kalida noted she learned a fuller definition of “protect and serve.”
“That doesn’t just mean when he’s on the clock for those eight hours,” she said. “It’s going to mean any time.”
But for the three days of the retreat, now in its third year, the 227 officers and spouses in attendance had the chance to stay completely off the clock to spiritually invest in themselves and each other.
In between sessions on Thursday, Williams sat in The Cove, remembering how 20 years ago a friend challenged him to become a police officer. Williams said no.
“I was always that young black kid that fit the description of someone who just committed armed robbery or rape,” Williams said. “I couldn’t go from one spot to another spot without someone pulling me over.”
So understandably, his feelings toward the police were less than amicable. But his friend pressed in with a simple question: “What are you going to do about it?”
The way his friend saw it, he could complain, or he could enact change.
Seventeen years of police work later, Williams is doing his part to not only work toward institutional change, but also bring the presence of God with him wherever he goes. He is sensitive to that, particularly when walking the inner city beat.
“It’s a privilege to serve people who don’t know God, and I use this as a ministry, to tell you the truth,” Williams said. “It’s a privilege to serve people who don’t know God because that’s an opportunity for me to introduce them.
“Scripture says, ‘Let your light shine before men.’ There should be something in you that causes someone to look at you and say, ‘What made you do it this way? Why did you do it that way?’ That’s how I try to live. That’s how I try to police.”
So wherever his job takes him and whatever he encounters, Williams is sensitive to God’s leading. He once showed up to work and was assigned a three-hour-old call. He approached the house cautiously. Upon talking with the tearful family members who had been fighting all day, he realized this was a social issue, not a criminal one.
“At that point, I said, ‘Listen. I’m not a cop right now. What I am going to do is show you the structure of the home according to the Bible, what the Bible says about the home. About how the husband is supposed to lead and run; about how he’s supposed to love his wife; how the wife and the husband are to work to raise the children, and the children are to honor the family.”
Williams said he turned off his radio and asked for a Bible. He spent five minutes flipping through Scriptures and then prayed with the family before leaving. The family, fully expecting someone to go to jail, was shocked.
As Williams left, he said the father approached him and offered this chilling thought, “He said, ‘I thank God that He sent you because I had made up in my mind that the officers that came would have to kill me before I went to jail.’”
Williams said, “That was the amazing thing. That was a shocker for me because had I gone in there with the mindset that somebody was going to jail, this man had already made up his mind that he would die before I took him to jail. But I tell you this, we never had to go back to that house again.”
There isn’t always the opportunity to negotiate, and Williams learned that in 2007 when he had to use his weapon because the approaching suspect had one pointed at him. The suspect lived, but psychologically, Williams realized that his childhood belief that there is good in everybody just wasn’t true.
“I came to the understanding of where I police, where I serve is that valley [David talks about in Psalm 23], and David was strong in his conviction that he would not fear evil because God was his shepherd; God had him. His rod and His staff were going to comfort him,” he said.
Still that doesn’t stop Williams from trying to change the perception, and he often tells inner city youth the same thing he was told 20 years ago.
“Here’s the honest-to-God truth, if you’re on the other side of those riot shields you can hurtle all the rocks and the insults and the cuss words you want at us, that will not change how we do business within the police department. But if you have a genuine interest in changing what you believe to be a flawed system, join into that system and then begin working from the inside out.
“We’re not occupying forces,” Williams later said. “I tell people this all the time. I’m not a police officer working in the community. I’m a community member working in law enforcement. When you look at it from that point of view, you understand I have this community’s best interest in mind.”
