Greg Young is the Head Chaplain and Critical Incident Stress Debriefer for the Germantown Police Department. In addition Greg is an International Law Enforcement Education Training Association Member. In addition Greg is a crisis responder for various agencies, providing Critical Incident Stress Debriefings and follow-up care where needed. Greg also has provided training for the Milwaukee Police Officer Support Team, the Brown County Sheriff’s Office Peer Support Team, the Waukesha County CISM team, the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office Debriefing Team, the Whitewater, Wisconsin Police Department Peer Support Team, and many others.
Most recently Greg has been asked to speak on the topic of “How to Foster Resilience in These Challenging Times” at several conferences, recently including the Michigan Chiefs’ of Police Conference, the World International Police Officer’s Young Officers conference, the Wisconsin State Attorney General’s Summit for Law Enforcement, The Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police, D.A.R.E. America International Conference, The Sheriffs’ Association of Texas Conference, and elsewhere. Greg has also trained officers who respond to law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty for the Wisconsin Chief’s of Police.
Greg presented his course on Jail Suicide Assessment, Intervention, and Postvention at the 13th International Critical Incident Stress Foundation World Congress in Baltimore, Maryland Greg was also a plenary session presenter at the 12th International Critical Incident Stress Foundation World Congress in Baltimore, Maryland. The title of his presentation was: “The CISM response to the Sikh Temple Shooting, a Chaplain’s Perspective”. In May of 2015 Greg is presenting his half day workshop at the ICISF World Congress on “Jail Suicide Prevention, Intervention, and Postvention”
Greg also participated as a panelist at a community forum and symposium of hope, recovery, and resiliency following the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy which was held at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, Connecticut. He then co-led a breakout session for first responders to the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting.
On September 27, 2016 Greg provided the invocation at the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington D.C.
On August 5, 2012, Greg was called by several agencies to respond to the Sikh Temple Mass Shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. He provided care for temple victims, family members of victims, and witnesses to the shooting. The following day a local company where several of the Sikh women from the temple were employed, called Greg in to provide Critical Stress Information for the Plant Manager, Vice President of Staffing, and the Human Resources Manager. During his time at the company Greg provided counseling for one Sikh women who had been shot in the arm at the temple the previous day.
Greg also worked with a team of 3 therapists and debriefers from FBIHQ to provide stress information, one-on-one availability, and small group debriefings for the FBI first responders.
Greg was also called to the scene of the Azana Spa & Salon shooting in Brookfield, Wisconsin. Greg worked with a team of crisis response specialists in providing psychological first aid for the Azana Staff and their clients who were there that day.
Greg also led the psychological debriefing for the Wauwatosa, Wisconsin Police Department following the tragic shooting death of one of their young female officers by her husband while she was on duty.
Greg has led psychological debriefings for other line of duty deaths, as well as for first responders following critical incidents. Greg is on-call as a debriefer for several agencies.
Greg is a part of a national crisis intervention team that is deployed in the immediate aftermath of a regional or national disaster. Greg was deployed with the Salvation Army to the Mississippi/Louisiana coast in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and has been to numerous regional critical incidents. Greg has deployed to numerous incidents with several different agencies. Over the years, Greg has made many death notifications and has trained numerous agencies in how to make compassionate death notifications. An article on Making Death Notifications that Greg wrote based on his seminar was published in the September, 2010 issue of “Police” magazine. See this link: http://www.policemag.com/Channel/Patrol/Articles/2010/09/Bearing-Bad-News.aspx In addition, an article that Greg wrote on “Crisis Communications” appeared in the April, 2014 issue of “Law and Order” magazine.
Greg trained the Milwaukee Fire Department Peer Support team and also taught a number of seminars at the Wisconsin Coroners and Medical Examiners Conference and provided training on Jail Suicide at various conferences around the country.
In November 2019, Greg led a team of 4 police officers from the Midwest to Ukraine to introduce regional police departments to Peer Support and Chaplaincy Programs. Upon arrival, Greg and 3 of the officers were invited to meet with the Ukraine Minister of Internal Affairs who made the decision following that meeting to open up the entire country to these kinds of programs and he ordered a police escort for our team as we traveled from region to region, meeting with police officers and speaking at Police Universities. Greg has been invited back to teach seminars at the Police University in Dnipro in 2020.
Greg has provide training on “Defusing the Team in Crisis” for small Wisconsin Hospitals’ staffs for the Rural Wisconsin Health Cooperative.He has also created a modified debriefing model which he been teaching to 26 counties’ Child Welfare Program staffs through an agency based at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay.
Greg has also presented at numerous conferences throughout the country.
Jail Suicide assessment and prevention and a course on Crisis Communications are a couple of the several classes that he currently teaches at a number of Midwest technical college criminal justice programs. Recently, Greg taught a course on making death notifications and crisis communications for the FBI in Wisconsin. He has also done videotaped lectures on making death notifications that are now a part of a national crisis response training curriculum.
Greg has a B.A. from Purdue University, and Master of Divinity from United Theological Seminary. In addition, he was trained as a pastoral psychotherapist at the Center for Religion and Psychotherapy of Chicago. Greg is currently the pastor of a Congregational Church in Brown Deer, Wisconsin. He is also a hospice chaplain.
Greg is currently a trainer for the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation and is qualified to train in five categories of Critical Incident Stress Management.