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Retired police Detective Kenneth Kennedy remembers how his heart sank when a late-night search for a missing person led to a car trunk in Albany. The victim, who turned out to be the mother of two of his colleagues, was dead.

The first person he called was Rev. James Lefebvre, chaplain to the Albany Police Department. He didn't quite know how to break the news to her sons.

"There's where your faith kicks in," said Det. Kennedy, a Catholic who attends St. Mary's parish in Albany, St. Madeleine Sophie in Schenectady and St. Francis Chapel in Colonie. "You don't know why these things happen.

"I guess you'd have more questions [without faith]," he continued. "Being a Catholic, you have to accept mysteries."

In his 27 years on the Albany police force - he served as an officer and a detective in the former Arbor Hill and downtown units - Det. Kennedy routinely turned to his Catholic faith to recover from trauma and deal with the complex feelings his work caused.

When he was called to the Hudson River to investigate the case of a mother drowning her three-year-old child, he recalled, prayer helped him move on from the grief he felt from bearing witness to the tragedy.

"Everybody handles it differently," he said. "You have to trust God, because what else can you do? If you don't have faith, you're just thinking that this is it, [and] what hope is there?"

Though the Albany department is growing more diverse, most officers were Catholic in Det. Kennedy's day. He said the sacraments are "the one thing we have over everybody else." A Catholic police officer, he said, can work anger out in confession or seek anointing of the sick if he or she gets injured on the job.

Police chaplains, he added, are like pastors, spiritual directors, counselors and honorary officers all rolled into one.

Father Lefebvre was the celebrant at Det. Kennedy's wedding and baptized his five children. The priest has assisted in hostage situations, routinely given last rites at crime scenes and monitored officers' mental and spiritual well-being.

"He rode around with us all the time," Det. Kennedy said. "Cops are human beings. The chaplain knows the police psyche and what cops are all about. You go for weeks and weeks [doing] a mundane job [and] all of a sudden, something happens and you really have to act."

Officers also see people "at their worst," during tragedies or when they've broken the law. Police never want to shoot or kill anyone, but some situations demand even that.

When a shift is over, it doesn't mean the officer's commitment to protecting society is done, either: "You never shut it off," said Det. Kennedy. "It seems like a cliché, but you are on 24 hours a day."

But to people like Det. Kennedy, police work is a calling. He said his purpose was to prevent people from victimizing others and to apprehend offenders, but also to be a helper when a child went missing or an elderly person fell out of bed.

"You are there to serve," he said, "just like a priest or a nun is."

Det. Kennedy is now a check-fraud investigator for Price Chopper's corporate headquarters.[[In-content Ad]]

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