Faith and the Badge – A Conversation with Martin Browne

by Brian Saint-Paul - April 21, 2011

Reprinted with permission.

Sergeant Martin Browne has been with the New York Police Department for 14 years, working out of a Queens precinct. In addition to his community award-winning work, he's also a devout Catholic. Brian Saint-Paul spoke to him about faith, the limits of the law, and life as a cop.

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Brian Saint-Paul: You're a policeman – is that what you wanted to be when you were a kid?

Martin Browne: I guess I always wanted to be a cop, only because my father was one as well. So that was always an interest. For a while, I thought I might go into the military, and wanted to be a Navy SEAL. But it was always in the back of my head that I would be a cop.

BSP: So you come from a law enforcement family. Does that extend beyond your father?

MB: No, he was the first. My grandfather came over from Ireland, and was a bartender most of his life, going with the stereotype. But then my father became a cop and spent 33 years on the job.

BSP: How old are you, if you don't mind my asking?

MB: I'm 40.

BSP: Me too. That's a hard age.

MB: I saw a priest the other day at the Mass I go to, and he looked like a kid. I told him it would be hard calling him "Father" when I probably threw him out of a park or something when he was a teenager. He said, "Yeah, you're probably right."

BSP: Have you always been a practicing Catholic?

MB: My father is a nominal Catholic and my mother is Italian, but Lutheran. So Catholicism was in my life, and we went to CCD, but it wasn't forced. When it came time for my Confirmation, my father said, "If you want to make it, make it. If you don't want to, don't. It's up to you." He stopped going to Mass years ago – after the Second Vatican Council, actually. He wasn't a traditionalist; his reasons were more political. He thought the Church had gone liberal.

I left the Church myself and started attending an Evangelical church with a friend. This was in my late high school years. Under the influence of Evangelicalism, I started to give up Catholicism, though it happened in stages. There were times when I was pretty anti-Catholic, while at other times, I thought maybe I could help save it.

Then, thanks to Catholic Answers and the large number of apologists who started coming up in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I made my way home to the Catholic Church.

BSP: As a function of your job, you've been around a lot of death and violence, and have seen some awful things. How has that affected your faith and your experience of your own mortality?

MB: When you're a cop, you end up being around a lot of dead bodies. Teenagers, babies, adults. Sometimes people are around their families when they die, and it gets you thinking about your own family. Other times, you see people who die alone. So when you're sitting there with the corpse of a person, and there's no one else around, it makes you think about your own life and how short it is. Of course, as a cop, you have friends get injured or die on the job, so it's always there. It gives you perspective. I mean, I put a bullet-proof vest on everyday, so who knows?

I think about that a lot.

BSP: As a policeman who is also a Catholic, are there certain saints or biblical figures who give you particular inspiration?

MB: I guess the obvious one is St. Michael, the patron saint of police officers. I have an image of him taped inside my locker, so every day when I get dressed and put on the uniform, I see it. I have different holy cards there – it's like my workplace shrine. I'm also part of the Holy Name Society at the police department, so I say that prayer as well.

BSP: Are there other practicing Catholics on the force? How do your colleagues react to your faith? You're not hiding it.

MB: Cops can be very cynical, of course. And even though there are many women on the force, there's still a lot of fraternal jabbing and teasing. As long as you can take a joke, and the others see you're a good guy, you can present your faith in a way that doesn't come across to them like you're preaching. Every year, I try to get a priest to come to the precinct to give out ashes for Ash Wednesday, and people will approach me to make sure he'll be there. So people do ask me questions about Catholicism, and I think my faith is well received.

Last year, we had a cop who left the police department and is now in the seminary. It was in the papers – the New York Post covered it.

BSP: Fantastic.

MB: I think he might have gone to Father Rutler's parish – the Church of Our Saviour, in Manhattan.

BSP: That would explain it.

MB: Right! Father Rutler is persuasive.

So I see a real openness among cops toward the Catholic Church. They may not be Latin Mass attending types like me, but they're sympathetic to the faith.

BSP: With that in mind, is there a difference between a Catholic cop and a non-Catholic cop, beyond the fact of Church membership? Does your faith affect your work, or is good policing just good policing?

MB: I think being a good cop has a lot to do with the Golden Rule. My father always taught me that, as a police officer, I should treat other people as I would want the police to treat my family. So I guess good policing lends itself to Catholicism, but doesn't require it.

This is the kind of job where I can live out the corporal and spiritual works, even down to "visiting the prisoner." I might have been the one to put them there, but that doesn't mean that I shouldn't treat them humanely and with respect. Even if they're going to jail, I can still treat them nicely.

BSP: As a police officer, you've sworn to uphold the law, regardless of whether you agree with it in its particulars. Has that ever presented a conflict for you?

MB: No, there's never been a situation like that specifically. Of course, you see differences on some political issues among police – the state's role in prohibiting marijuana, for example. But I haven't had anything turn into a moral issue for me. If tomorrow the government made it illegal to read the Bible, then obviously that would hit me as a real moral challenge. But if a cop disagrees with the law on marijuana, he can still enforce it without violating his conscience. Everyone knows the rules, so if you're smoking pot outside, I don't think I'm doing something immoral in making that arrest.

Now, there are some cops for whom that is a problem. Recently, I heard about a police officer – not in New York – who was suspended or fired for saying publicly that he wouldn't arrest anyone for marijuana.

But for me, I haven't seen anything in law enforcement that crosses the moral line for me.

BSP: Churchill said that, "If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law." This is a problem, as each year new laws are added to the books. How do you keep on top of them? Or can you?

MB: To be honest, I think it would be almost impossible for a police officer to keep on top of them. As an NYPD cop, I enforce all of the laws of New York state. The basic penal law – murder, robbery, rape – is pretty clear. But there are other laws – agricultural and sanitation laws, for example – that fall under the authority of other agencies. Theoretically, we should enforce them, but there's no way a cop can know them all. Most of the time, those laws are either not enforced or are enforced by other agencies. I'm not sure anyone can keep up with all of them.

BSP: So are there laws that are simply unenforceable?

MB: Yes, I think there are certain laws that would fall in that category. Maybe some of the blue laws, for example, if they present a manpower issue. A lot of laws go unenforced because we either don't know about them, or we don't have enough cops to cover them.

BSP: What kinds of changes would you like to see instituted that would have a direct and positive impact on your police work?

MB: Some cops have gotten away from local policing. The greatest compliment I received recently came when I was trying to help someone get a summer job through a non-profit organization. When I went to the school to get them to fill out her working papers, one of the assistant principles saw me and said, "You should be a local town cop, not a city police officer"" By that, she meant that I know the people – I get out of the car and talk to them.

The greatest impact we have is when we get out there and get to know the people in the area we're policing.

Brian Saint-Paul is the editor of www.InsideCatholic.com and can be reached at saint-paul@insidecatholic.com.