Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
Come on a ride along with a Veteran Homicide Detective as the twists and turns of the job suddenly end his career and nearly his life; discover how something wonderful is born out of the Darkness. Embark on the journey from helping people on their worst days, to bringing life, excitement and smiles on their best days.
Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)
"Hey Chaplain": Guardian of the Guardians..The Role, The Myths and The Mission
What happens when faith collides with the trauma of policing? After 25 years as a pastor and a decade as a police chaplain, Jared Altick has witnessed this intersection firsthand, walking alongside officers during their darkest moments while navigating his own spiritual journey.
With disarming honesty, Altick reveals the hidden realities of police chaplaincy—how he entered a world where his presence initially made officers uncomfortable, with some apologizing for cursing while others deliberately swore more to test his boundaries. Through persistence and genuine care, he's built trust with officers who've allowed him into their struggles with PTSD, alcoholism, and moral injury. "I had no connection to law enforcement," Altick shares. "I did not think about law enforcement unless they were in my rearview mirror." Now, his dream is to support officers throughout their entire careers, from academy to retirement.
The conversation takes a powerful turn when our host shares his own journey with PTSD and suicidal thoughts, revealing how childhood trauma led him to law enforcement and eventually to a breaking point. This vulnerability opens the door to exploring why officers often choose suicide over acknowledging mental health struggles, and how even younger generations who seem more open about anxiety can quickly adopt the "stuff it down" mentality that pervades police culture.
Perhaps most compelling is Altick's explanation of "moral injury"—the spiritual wound that occurs when officers realize they can't save everyone. "You thought you were going to rescue, you thought you were going to save the day, and you didn't get to do that," he explains. This disillusionment often leads to a crisis of faith, with many officers questioning God's role in allowing such suffering.
Whether you're in law enforcement, another high-stress profession, or simply navigating your own relationship between faith and trauma, this conversation offers wisdom that transcends occupation. Listen now, and then share it with someone who needs this message of hope, understanding, and spiritual resilience.
Gift For You!!! Murders to Music will be releasing "SNAPSHOTS" periodcally to keep you entertained throughout the week! Snapshots will be short, concise bonus episodes containing funny stories, tid bits of brilliance and magical moments!!! Give them a listen and keep up on the tea!
Hi, I'm Aaron your host and I would love to invite you to leave a review, send some fan mail or email me at Murder2Music@gmail.com. Does something I'm saying resonate with you...Tell me about it! Is there something you want to hear more about...Tell me about it! This show is to provide value, education and entertainment and hopefully find its way to the WORLD! Share, Like and Love the Murders to Music Podcast!
www.StreamlineEventsLLC.com
www.DoubleDownDuo.com
@StreamlineSEE
@DDownDuo
Youtube-Instagram-Facebook
I'm a pastor at a church for 25 years in Kansas City, kansas. I'm also a police chaplain. I've been a police chaplain for several years also in Kansas City, kansas. I am also a podcaster and I have produced shows. I have a show that has done very, very well and I interview police officers from all around the world. I have guests on from LAPD because I have several connections to LAPD, to Scotland Yard. I have three different detectives in Scotland Yard that I'm acquainted with, and so they've been on the show.
Speaker 1:Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Murders to Music podcast. My name is Aaron, I'm your host and you guys are in for a pretty awesome show. So we've got a guest on our show tonight. Our guest is named Jared Altick. Now, jared has been in the law enforcement business for right around two decades, but he's not a police officer. Jared is a police chaplain for the Kansas City Police Department in Kansas City, kansas, and in that role his job is to be there on the front lines with the police officers and help them through their struggles. But we're going to come back to that police chaplain role in a second we're going to.
Speaker 1:I'm going to touch on something else first. You know we did an episode a while back called Faith on the Front Lines and that was, and has been, our most popular episode that I have done on this show out of the 81 episodes that I've released. Now that Faith on the Frontline episode, we attacked spirituality, not only in the front lines of law enforcement and first responders, but the corporate world. So we want to approach this from a global perspective. A global approach where, no matter what you do for a living perspective, a global approach where no matter what you do for a living. If you're a Christian and you are a believer, then it's applicable to you, and this is not a Christian quote unquote podcast, but I'm also a man of faith and I'm not going to steer away from it. I think it's important to talk about and I think, just like the stigma of PTSD, faith isn't spoken about enough in our environments. So that podcast we were able to attack issues such as what is it like being the most intense person in the room, what is it like going and seeing the darkness and depravity of human nature all week long and then showing up at a life group on a Thursday night.
Speaker 1:And when they say, hey, what can we pray for? And you're like, you know what I'm really struggling because I had X, y or Z happen. I saw this, I saw that. And then, all of a sudden, the people in the room are like hold up yo, hold up dude. Uh, you're, you're sharing too much. Okay, I need you to back off the details. Let's not talk about it. Just say it's an unspoken prayer request, because I'm getting triggered over here and you know what it's making me uncomfortable. What is it like then Then? That first responder or that police officer or maybe that corporate person that had just got into this hellacious, hectic battle with his boss, maybe that person feels like man, is this really the place for me? Is faith really where I need to live right now? You know, maybe I'm better off handling this on my own, and we know that's the devil getting a foothold. That's given us an excuse to exit stage left, but it doesn't mean we won't take it.
Speaker 1:You know and in the law enforcement world I can be honest with you I have never had a use for a law enforcement chaplain. When they come around, I try to avoid them. When they come around, I go the other direction. I hide in my cubicle, I go get coffee. I hope that they don't come over and start chitting and chattering with me. They're not cops. They don't understand what we're going through. I don't want to share with them. I don't want to be their friend. That has always been my approach to the law enforcement chaplaincy program. I've never had a use for one until my son was born and was dying and I had the Anchorage Police Department chaplain there with me At that moment. I would have had anybody pray with me, but other than that throughout my years of law enforcement I never would have anything to do with them. However, hindsight being 20-20, now that I'm willing to face my devils and my demons and the secrets I really wish I would have utilized them.
Speaker 1:Tonight we're going to talk to Jared. He's going to talk about his experiences in 20 years as a police chaplain, his full-time ministry. He's going to talk about what it's like to have the weight of the world piled onto his shoulders by all of his officers and then what he does to get out from underneath it. What does he do for his own mental health? Has there been times that he's nearly broken? How has that affected his family? We're going to talk about all that stuff. We're going to get into it, and you don't have to be a cop to get this. You can be anybody. We're going to talk about it from an approach that, no matter what world you're in law enforcement, corporate fire, whatever you can get something out of this. So, jared, tell us about yourself. How'd you get involved in this? What do you do? Who is Jared?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm a police chaplain in Kansas City and the way I got into police, chaplaincy is my day job. My full-time occupation is I'm a pastor at a church and I feel like God kept putting cops and other first responders in my church and so I had no connection to law enforcement. I did not think about law enforcement unless they were in my rearview mirror. It just wasn't on my radar for several years. But my predecessor was a police chaplain and so it was kind of in the back of my mind that there was a way to help. And as I got to know these cops that were in my church, I became close to them, I befriended them. I saw that I had an ignorance gap where I did not know what it was like to be in a first responder family. I had no idea what it was like for them and for their family members for them to have a job that could kill them, and and that's a different type of stress than what an accountant has, that's a different type of stress than what a teacher has. And so I learned over years and became exposed to the first responder and also the military. We're very close to Fort Leavenworth and so I became exposed to the military deployment dynamic and the first responder stress dynamic. As a minister in a church and when I finally, the breaking point for me was my young officers, young, 30-year-old detectives were having to do death notifications. Well, I'm fairly comfortable in that environment. I've been doing funerals for 30 years. No-transcript started. That's why I looked into it, that's why I pursued it.
Speaker 2:And then, once I got into it, then I became obsessed with officer wellness and and like how can I help these guys have a healthier career? How can I help them? You know, is there any way that I can put a dent in the divorce rate, the suicide rate, the alcoholism rate? You know, can I? Can I make any impact at all? And I found that, yes, I could. I could make a small impact, not with everybody, but it's kind of like the story of the little boy on the beach who's throwing starfish back into the ocean and an old man comes along and criticizes him and says look, there's thousands of starfish dying on the beach. You can't help them all, you can't make a difference for all of them. But the little boy picks up another starfish, throws it back in the ocean. He says, well, I made a difference for that one, and so that became my philosophy and my MO as a police chaplain. I cannot help everybody Not everybody wants to talk to the chaplain but if I can provide some kind of psychological, emotional or spiritual support in a way that a counselor or peer support can't quite do it because I'm coming from a different direction If I can have one foot in the department, one foot outside the department and provide some help and be one of the tools in the toolbox when they need that help, then I became passionate about doing that and I've been in ministry for about 30 years. But I became a chaplain. I started volunteering about 10 years ago and I was formally like background checked and everything in my department in Kansas City, kansas, about eight years ago. So that's about how long I've been doing it in a formal sense.
Speaker 2:Now I'm on call, I get paged out. I was paged out to a homicide just last week and so I get called out to homicide suicides, natural deaths, accidents. So I get called out to homicide suicides, natural deaths, accidents, and then we do death notifications. I do ride-alongs. I wear a vest and ride in the patrol car with my officers. I do lots of roll calls. I'm in the different police stations, and now that I've been doing it for some years, they come to me. And now, now that I've been doing it for some years, they come to me and I do premarital counseling, marital counseling, psychological debriefs, that kind of thing I do, you know, critical incident debriefs and critical incident stress management, all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. So while you've been doing it officially 10-ish years, if I understood you correctly at first, even dating back that 25-year mark you've had law enforcement in your congregation and while maybe not doing it officially, you've been counseling and absorbing and understanding this law enforcement world for it sounds like over a couple of decades. Would I be right in that?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, I mean, I was called out to—I've been called out to suicides and to other critical incidents as a pastor, and so I was involved in these scenes. But at the time I was so ignorant I did not know who—I didn't know the social workers from the detectives, from the CSI, from the transportation company that was going to move the body. They were all just a blur to me. And so when I became a chaplain, I had to jump into the deep end of the pool and learn everything. I'm a quick study and I'm a student of history, and so, like one hurdle that was not difficult for me was learning rank structure. I never had a trouble. I never had trouble distinguishing a major from a captain. That was not a problem for me. But there were lots of other nuances to police culture that I just had to start asking questions.
Speaker 2:Fortunately, I was surrounded by people who were career law enforcement, who were willing and ready to take me under their wing and let me ask stupid questions. You know what is this for? What does this do? I never was a kid who wanted to be a cop. That was never like an aspiration of mine, and so so there was a knowledge gap where I just kind of had the cultural knowledge from like TV shows and movies, which is incredibly wrong most of the time, and so so I had to overcome that and learn and I became a just voracious reader of everything police magazines and police you know, manuals, and like I'd go attend classes with my police officers and I just became someone who just could not absorb enough information. I listened to every police podcast I listened to, you know, I listened to police radio shows. Every bit of information I could absorb I tried to absorb to help me separate back from fiction and understand police culture.
Speaker 1:So a couple of things I want to touch on you you mentioned. Well, let's go in reverse order. Let's touch on that last one first. So it sounds like you are immersing yourself into this police world to learn, and I'll just tell you my experience. I've had several police chaplains around me that did that and they wanted to be. They were a wannabe cop, they wanted to go out. They just, you know, fancied themselves as a cop, but they never, you know, they just didn't, would you say you fall into that line and I think I know the answer to this. What was your reason for getting that immersed into it?
Speaker 2:And once you did get the taste of it. Did you turn into a wannabe? No, no, like I said, it helped that I never aspired to be a police officer in the first place. And I'm old enough. I'm in my late 40s. I'm old enough to know I am not going to be in the stack with the SWAT team to make entry. I don't want to, I'm not interested in that. That is just not my thing.
Speaker 2:And it's very important that a chaplain has a clear sense of identity. I am here to support these police officers. I am here to understand them. That's crucial that I understand, and so I'll go to trainings and sit in on classes and understand all the information. I can do, I can talk the talk, but I have no interest in getting in the way and interfering in some way, because, frankly, I'm too old, I'm too alien to that. I know myself well enough not to become that wannabe. But that is a danger when we recruit chaplains. Police work is interesting. Police work is compelling. It's human drama. It's finding answers. There's a lot there that could suck you in. It's finding answers. There's a lot there that could suck you in. And so every chaplain is going to have to have accountability within his chaplaincy group and within his agency, to be like chaplain. Remember you're a chaplain.
Speaker 1:A moment ago, you mentioned about the suicide and divorce rate. Let's talk about that a little bit. You know, and I know when you and I spoke briefly on the phone the other day, we spoke about this and while you're not an expert in it, you definitely are diving into it and have more knowledge than the typical lay person. Let's talk about the suicide divorce rate amongst law enforcement and first responders. Where are we today versus where we were maybe yesterday?
Speaker 2:Well, it's not as bad as reported. There's a understanding in and around law enforcement culture that oh, it's so bad and everybody gets divorced at least once and everybody is a risk for suicide and everybody's an alcoholic, and that's exaggerated. That's just not true. The stress of the job is real and different personalities are going to have different things manifest in them based on their background and current influences and what they're doing to mitigate it. But the idea that every law enforcement officer or every veteran has PTSD and especially the D, the dysfunction, the brokenness there, that's just not fair or right.
Speaker 2:We should give people credit. We have a lot of resilient police officers. We have a lot of people who are a police officer and they have been married to you know, for 25 years to one person you know, consecutively, and and that that is a thing that exists. Now, granted, the numbers on all of those things and I would include alcoholism in there too the numbers for all those things are higher than they should be and higher than what we want them to be. Because all of those things if you're going through a divorce, if you're struggling with substance abuse, if you're dealing with suicidal ideation, all of those things make you less safe and they interfere with your ability to do the thing you were called to do. And so if we can mitigate those, if we can help somebody get to a place where they're finding help and they're able to ask for help and receive that help, if we're able to get a couple together into counseling or send them on a retreat or do whatever we can, there's different answers.
Speaker 2:Not everybody has. There's no simple, straightforward solution one-size-fits everybody. That doesn't exist. And some agencies have a culture of of, you know, not just a bad divorce rate but reckless promiscuity. Uh, that's a way that some people handle trauma. Uh, some go drink, some go sleep with anybody and everybody they can, and so so there's different kinds of trauma responses and some agencies you'll find clusters of these behaviors together.
Speaker 2:And just like you have other social contagions where you don't sit a bunch of young girls down and talk to them about eating disorders, because what they found over the decades of talking to them about eating disorders, because what they found over the decades of talking to girls about eating disorders is that the more you talk about it, the more likely it'll occur, and so you have to be careful when you have these psychological clusters. But that is a thing that sometimes occurs in some agencies and all of those things can be dealt with. All those things can—there's lots of things, not just chaplains but there's lots of ways to respond to that in leadership in an agency and then outside support with whether it's your EAP clinicians that are going to come in or it's chaplains or it's a really solid peer support program sometimes is exactly the right thing for an agency. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work at all. But, like I said, each agency has its own unique set of circumstances and there are solutions that can be applied to those.
Speaker 1:So in that conversation we spoke about PTSD and suicide and divorce. You know from my personal experience there's a stigma with PTSD and there was a time in my life that I would have rather and I did go out to the woods and put a gun in my mouth, then tell somebody that I was struggling mentally and feel that weakness. I would have rather killed myself than wondered what people would think if I was a medicated police officer, taking some kind of Wellbutrin or you know some kind of anti-anxiety medication, or identify or acknowledge that I had a problem. I can't believe I'm the only person that feels that way.
Speaker 1:From your experience on the chaplaincy side of this, do you see cops that come to that fork in the road where you know we do have a suicide rate? We do have a suicide problem in America, not just with law enforcement but with veterans and all that other stuff. Ptsd is a real thing. Mental health issues as a result of what we experience of a death by a thousand cuts, is also real. Do you see that fork in the road where cops are, you know, potentially suicidal or really having a hard time acknowledging their mental health issues due to the stigma surrounding PTSD?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's actually stereotypical, that the the stereotype the old school stereotypes been around for many years now is that you don't want to talk about it because of the stigma. If you admit that you need therapy or medication, then they're going to take you off the street, they're going to take your gun away. You're going to, if not lose your job outright, you're at least going to be sidelined, and that is just unbearable, especially if you're in a specialized unit, if you've worked for years to get into the SWAT team and now you're going to have that taken away from you because you're going to go to the doctor and be medicated for depression or some other treatable condition. That is unacceptable, and so that has been the case for many, many years now, and so they'd tell you to suck it up or go home and drink yourself to sleep, like everybody else has for decades and decades. And that's how you manage it supposedly Now that stigma has been around for so long.
Speaker 2:And the effort to reduce the stigma and to normalize asking for help and to normalize these debriefs where you sit in a group and you talk about the accident where some person's body was torn apart and they would be going out having to pick up the body parts off the street. That kind of experience and then talking about it and normalizing that has been underway for some years now. And it is interesting I teach in our police academy. Our younger recruits, the under 30 crowd, especially the under 25 crowd, are surprisingly open to saying I really struggle with this or I have anxiety or whatever. And even the guys that are just 10 or 20 years older are looking at them like why did you say that out loud? I don't want to know that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:But that generation is a little more willing to speak, but not all of them, in fact. The old school I have more 25-year-old old school cops than I can shake a stick at. There are plenty of them because it's built into the type of person who wants to be a police officer. Someone comes into police work primarily. Most of them would say especially if you ask them at the early stages why do you want to be a cop? They would answer I want to be a police officer to help people, and sometimes that actually comes from a place where they have a bad history, where they themselves were not helped. They needed someone to come rescue them and the help never came. And so they grew up to be an adult and they said I will not let that happen to somebody else.
Speaker 2:I am going to go help when I wasn't helped, going to go help when I wasn't helped, and a lot of times childhood trauma actually intensifies the experience of the trauma you experience at work as a police officer and and you then are that much closer to that post-traumatic stress becoming a dysfunction and interfering with your life, interfering with your relationships, interfering with your ability to sleep, interfering with your life, interfering with your relationships, interfering with your ability to sleep, interfering with your ability to responsibly handle alcohol.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it's those childhood experiences that drove you to become a police officer that also make you more vulnerable to the dysfunction. Now that doesn't mean it can't be treated, doesn't mean it can't be mitigated. Of course it can be, but not if we're not talking about it. Really, the best mitigation there is is to talk about it. Your ability to tell the story that you just told, that I was willing to go out in the woods and face whatever those consequences were, rather than admit the other one. Just talking about that and being able to express that openly and transparently is wonderful therapy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I totally agree with you. I think that you know I wouldn't have got to where I was, where I can talk about this openly and if you've watched any or listened to any of the podcast, I'm very transparent and vulnerable on it. But I wouldn't have got there without literally hitting rock bottom and finding myself needing therapy and accepting the stigma of PTSD, realizing that it's crap and that this is a real deal. It took me a while to accept the PTSD diagnosis and then, once I did, that got me on the healing side of the journey. Right, I had to crest that mountain before I could get on the healing side of it and it's only because of the therapy and the EMDR and faith that I'm able to discuss those things. You know, two things came up that I want to circle back on One when we were talking about the younger generation today that is willing to step up and say I have anxiety issues. I have, you know, issues that I'm dealing with. Yet those people 10 years older are like shut your mouth, you have no idea what you're saying. Right, they're coming at it from two different sides and one of the things that I see is as being a potential barrier to healing and progression is.
Speaker 1:Currently, a lot of our field training officers are of the age where it is still a stigma. We don't talk about it, we suck it up buttercup. And those are the people who are training our next generations. And while I don't think we can completely detune out of the younger generation that's willing to speak, because let's get real they're going to be pushing for union breaks and they want their 15 minutes and they want their cell phones and everything else. Right, it's a different generation than when I started doing this 25 years ago, but the field training officers are still that old school mentality. So I'm scared and I could be completely wrong in this. This is a completely anecdotal opinion, but I think that you know we're going to have a few more years of this old school mentality bred into the younger cops, and it's not until those younger guys in the academy become the field training officers that I think we'll really see a switch. Do you agree? Disagree? What are your thoughts?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm less optimistic than you are. Uh, because because of I've watched these officers. I've trained them in the academy. I came in and taught different days at the academy and then I saw them progress. And they go from bright-eyed, clean-shaven, baby-faced recruits in the FTO program to, just a few years later, they've all grown a beard, even the women. They've all grown a beard, and and they're. They've got this thousand yard stare and and, and they've been converted to the idea that they have to be old school, they have to stuff it down, pour alcohol on it and and you know, as much nicotine and caffeine as they can consume, especially if they're on night shift, and that that's just know. Because that's what they've been trained by the generation and I'm being generation the officers that are two or three years ahead of them are training them. This is how you survive, this is how you deal with standing next to a dead body for three hours. This is how you do it. And so a percentage of even that young generation that is very willing to be open and transparent and talk about their weaknesses, a percentage of them, are going to be converted.
Speaker 2:You should be able to ask in a modern police agency. You should be able to ask for a mental health day. Many agencies don't even offer it. But even the ones that do, boy, they're going to mark you down and it's right there on the same whiteboard as the sick abuse list. And if you ask for it too often, you're a liability, and that's problematic. And it's not just administratively problematic, it's also practically problematic because if I can't count that you're going to be there, my life may depend on you backing me up, and so. So if you're saying you're weak, the job we do is teaching us, training us, convincing us that that I have to depend on you, and if I can't depend on you, I'd rather you not even be out there. And so police work is naturally going to steer people that direction. Now, I'm not saying that they can't balance that out, but it's going to take open, transparent, willing to talk about their weaknesses, recru and turn them into old school cops pretty quick, because that's the natural flow of the job.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree completely. When you do have those police officers out there that are calling in for those mental health days, on a peer-to-peer level, administratively it's one thing, but on a peer-to-peer level I think you're absolutely right. If you see the partner next to you as weak, then you don't know what's going on. And a couple things are happening. One, you're judging them and you don't know what they're capable of or not capable of. So do you want them out there covering you? And the third thing is I think that in my experience, the officers I was the officer struggling. In my experience, the officers I was the officer struggling. I was the officer sitting on the bench in the roll call room or not in the roll call room, but in the change out room, crying every single night, surrounded by 10 or 15 of my peers, for months and nobody ever asked me what was wrong. I was the guy going out and getting into fights every single night with every single person I contacted and nobody said hey, man, this is odd behavior, so we're scared. I think, as those peers, they're scared to reach out and ask. They're in uncharted territories, they don't have the training for it. They would rather back you up on a code three cover call when you're getting into a fight on the street. Then try to deal into your mental health issues that you may be having. You know, and for me, it was the culmination of that period in my life 2012, where I was suicidal. You know, um, that was sorry. 2013, 2012, where I was suicidal and, um, nobody would ever ask me what was going on in the locker room, but they would have my back every night when I got into fights on the street, and I just think that you know that's just going to your. I feel like a case study for you. Honestly, jared, I feel like you know. I feel like we don't know each other. You don't know my story, but I feel like a lot of the stuff you're saying from your professional perspective and your decades of doing this and your.
Speaker 1:We're going to talk a little bit about where you've taught and spoken and presented, and all that here and stuff in a second. You know, but you mentioned a moment ago a lot of times those police officers become police officers because of the stuff that happened in their past or when they were a child, and those things can manifest, you know, good or bad fruit in the future. You don't know my why, and that came out during my podcast, or it came out during my therapy and I've got a podcast on it. But my why is I was sexually abused 8, 9, 10 years old and I didn't tell anybody about it. It and this happened over and over and over again, and it was because of that that, I think, I went into law enforcement.
Speaker 1:And not only went into law enforcement, but chased it so hard and with so much tenacity that I was willing to work myself literally into a heart attack or a stroke in 2022 and had to come out with PTSD and stress-related issues. Why was I working 36 hours straight? It's because there's some asshole out there who needs to go to jail because he's raping kids or he's killing people. Well, what's the drive for that? The drive for that is the fact that it happened to me and nobody did anything about it, because I didn't tell anybody, and I just think that it just comes full circle. You know, it's a real deal, everything you're saying. I'm the living proof of your case study and it's just. I don't know.
Speaker 2:I'm glad to hear you say it.
Speaker 2:You are a good example of that and your situation is unique to you. Okay, you had your own specific circumstances, but you're not alone. I know hundreds of police officers who have the exact same story, and a percentage of them have never been able to say what you just said out loud. Yeah, they, they have the same story, they just can't say it out loud yet. And so and there's something else too You're talking about your, your fellow officers surrounding you, and they were willing to back you up in a fight, but they weren't willing to engage you on an emotional level.
Speaker 2:Human beings have a natural and almost superstitious view of emotions and negative emotions and, and you know, psychological damage and that kind of thing. We have different terms for it over the centuries, but we have this fear that it's contagious, weak, and I can't explain it. I get spooked by it as a human being. I get spooked by it and I fear that if I get too close, I'll catch it from you and and that is not rational, that is not real, but but there is there is that fear that that you know well, if I, if I get too close, if I engage you, then then it's going to undo me, and sometimes that's just our own fear of our own weaknesses. But, man, we get stronger by embracing that stuff. We get stronger by giving it a name and taking control of it, not hiding from it, but anyway.
Speaker 1:I agree, I'm going to change it just a little bit. Go a different direction. When you find yourself in the police department and you come in as the chaplain, the man of faith, the Bible thumper into that environment. What is that like for you and what are the misconceptions that you've found around? Chaplaincy, or faith in the police department, or faith on the front lines?
Speaker 2:It's hilarious when a chaplain walks into a room and I don't get to see it as much because everybody's familiar with me. Now I've got years, I mean most of them, over half my officers, I've met them at the academy and the older group. They've been around me for years and so I don't see this anymore. But when I first started coming to the police station I'd walk in the room and you'd have everybody like deer in a headlight freeze and like because they'd realize oh no, a chaplain is here and half of them would start apologizing because they had just dropped an F-bomb. And they're so embarrassed and they're oh chaplain.
Speaker 2:I'm so sorry. I can't believe. I just said that. I can't believe. I just swore in front of a chaplain. The other half, who might not have been swearing, start swearing more and that's their own defense mechanism. They're like trying to stiff arm me and I found that cops will try to push you away to see if you can be pushed away. It's a test. There's that reaction of not knowing what to do with the chaplain. Do I have to mind my P's and Q's because the chaplain's in the room? Do I need to try to? And the next day and just become part of the environment? And that's the whole.
Speaker 2:Key is I'm trying to build rapport. I'm trying to build a connection so that when somebody has a crisis either they themselves or a family member, when they need support, they shouldn't have to go to a stranger and start out with my name. Is this I work at the police department. They shouldn't have to go to a stranger and start out with my name. Is this I work at the police department. They shouldn't have to do that. They should at least have the option of going to someone who understands what they do. They understand police culture, they understand who they work for and why their sergeant doesn't like them, and all of those dynamics. To have someone that they could talk to, that knows that is a huge asset, that's a wonderful advantage.
Speaker 2:And there is a point amidst all the chaos, that you can count on Chaplain Altick being there and that I'm always there. I'm just as reliable as can be. My aspiration, my big dream in chaplaincy is that some of these guys that I taught at the academy, where I taught them how to do death notifications when they were 21 years old, that 25 years from now they'll retire and I will have been their chaplain their entire career. That's my big goal. That's my one big thing. Please, Lord, don't let me die before I'm able to accomplish this one thing. That's my big goal.
Speaker 1:I think when I think of a chap, when I think of a chaplain or, uh well, when I think of a chaplain, I see two prongs. I see one prong being that officer awareness, that officer assistance role. The other place that I've used chaplains is on the street as more of that social worker role or you spoke about it earlier, that death notification, whatever it may be. Would you agree with my assessment kind of that two-prong approach that you guys have, or what are your thoughts?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I see it as wearing two hats. I get called out to homicide, suicides, accidental deaths. I'm on call and we actually have a chaplain car. I drive a police car that says chaplain on the side and they give us lights. They do not give us sirens, but I can call out to somebody. Yeah, the last thing a chaplain needs is a siren. We would get ourselves in so much trouble. The last thing a chaplain needs is a siren. We would get ourselves in so much trouble. But we respond out to those scenes and we work with the officers.
Speaker 2:So here a week and a half ago I got got paged out and it was a J one, a homicide, and we we went out there. It was a, it was a 19 year old, uh, so I had some kind of interaction with the cartel and drug dealing and whatever. And they sent a group out to talk to him, or maybe affiliates came out to talk to him Uh, that's probably a fuzzy line, but but it turned into a gunfight, him against the group and he lost and so we had a 19 year old dead hole in his chest. Um, mother was there. Uh, first responding officer was was officer was you know, one of my patrol officers did CPR on him. He was probably already gone, but she did that because there's family right there.
Speaker 2:There's lots of layers, is what I'm saying. I've got officers who are responding. I've got civilians who are there, witnesses, family members. Some of the gunshots went into a neighboring house. There was a five-year-old boy inside. That house wasn't hit, but we had to go check on him. And so when I'm responding, I've got the mother of the deceased who's just up the street from the body that's still laying out there and she doesn't understand why she can't go to her child. She's been separated because now there's police tape up. She doesn't understand why she can't go to the child and so someone needs to explain that. And I've been taught and trained. You know how to explain that to the family and do some crisis counseling kind of on the spot, find resources, call people for her.
Speaker 2:I was gathering neighbors Actually. I put her in one of the neighbor's houses and the detectives came by and talked to her later. But I'm coordinating with everybody and I'm talking with her. Then the father of the deceased arrives. I talked to him. Then I go to the house where the little boy was at, where the house got shot, and I bring a stuffed animal to him and I'm doing some crisis counseling with him and with his parents. I've got a couple of social workers with me there. There's a lot of of management of the people around the crime scene that my officers don't have time to do all of that because they're managing the scene, they're collecting evidence, they're doing police work down over here and we're going to wait and I'm going to explain why this is going to take several hours to bring out CSI and collect the evidence and scan. You know we're going to laser scan the entire scene in and take all the photographs.
Speaker 2:I can explain that in a way because I'm not wearing, you know, a police uniform. I actually have kind of a uniform. I'm wearing a chaplain shirt and so I'm able to present a different face and help with that process with those civilians. But then I need to go check on my officers, so that's the other hat I wear. So one hat is with the civilians, one hat's with my officers.
Speaker 2:I want to go check my officers because some of those officers came and they were there. They were the first ones there before the fire department got there, before the paramedics. They were in, you know, up to their eyeballs and all of the blood and the guts and everything else. They were on scene and they were seeing traumatic things and they were witnessing. You know the mom saying, you know, save my child, save my child. And you look at the young man and he's gone. You know there is no saving him at this stage. And so how does that officer feel? That officer became a police officer to save people, but this isn't a situation where the person could be saved. So that's the kind of dynamic that I'm working with, both with civilians and with my officers. I'm wearing both hats.
Speaker 1:So with that, you've spent over 20 years walking besides officers and civilians in their darkest moments. That has got to put some weight onto your shoulders. How do you personally deal with that to keep it from overwhelming you and overcoming you, and how do you find the strength to keep going forward?
Speaker 2:Well, I have a lot of advantages because I did not get into the worst of this as an actual police chaplain responding to calls until I was in my 40s. I was older, had more life experience, had a stronger foundation than if I had started this at age 21. I had a lot of advantage there. Then I have great support around me, A wonderful home life growing up. I've got a strong marriage. I still love my parents. I have a lot of support around me and then I have my faith and in my understanding of my purpose in this world. I have a pretty well-developed theology of why bad things happen, and so I have a good place to start with dealing with seeing dead bodies and dead children and tragic things and mourning mothers. I have a good place to start with how to deal with that. That being said, it does build up over time.
Speaker 2:I had an episode here almost two years ago where I had sudden outburst of emotion. I was weeping and then I was having intrusive thoughts and I was seeing this dead body in front of me and I was like what in the world? I've never had anything like that ever in my life, but here I was unable to control my emotions and, like I said, having these invasive, these intrusive thoughts that I never had that before. But I have been training people for years to go talk to someone, and so I've had people to call and and we did a debrief and I, I talked about it and got some help, and and that's I have to do the same thing. I have to take my own medicine If I'm going to tell cops they need to go talk to somebody, and then that's what I have to do too, and so so that's what I do.
Speaker 1:So on your team. Uh, are you the only chaplain for the police department or are there other chaplains there?
Speaker 2:We have several chaplains. We have a chaplain organization, a chaplain association.
Speaker 1:What does the ratio look like? Chaplains to law enforcement officers One chaplain will cover how many officers?
Speaker 2:Well, when I first became a chaplain I thought well, I'll be a chaplain for the whole city and Kansas City, Kansas. We probably have 1,000 first responders between the fire department, police department and the sheriff's office. And I quickly found out that is not reasonable, I can't cover that many. So I thought that's okay, our police department. We have about 350 sworn, I'll just cover those. Well, that's still too many for me to really know them.
Speaker 2:Well, I can look at a roster and see everybody's names. I can learn a lot of names and faces but realistically you can't operate in a crowd that large, not at a close level. I kind of look at it as three levels. You can know somebody's name, you can know second level, kind of know some facts about them. Third level is you actually know, like, their hopes and dreams and aspirations? You're not going to get to even the second level if you have 350 people to manage.
Speaker 2:I think that across cultures, across history, humans put themselves in groups of about 100 to 150. Churches often find that they have trouble breaking into a number larger than that. They get about 100, 150, 200 people and they're like man, we can't grow. And then the ones that do grow find out. Oh, we're actually four or five groups that all meet in the same building, and those groups tend to be about 100, 120, 150 people, and so I think that there's a natural number there and I would recommend that chaplains see it as okay. You can take about 100 to 150 people.
Speaker 2:That's the group that you can have a close connection to, and in our agency we have about 130 patrol officers, and so what I did pretty early on is I became a patrol chaplain. I specialized just in patrol officers. If they get promoted, if they get transferred to a special unit, they become a detective. Honestly, I don't give them special attention. I'm focused on the younger set of officers who are in patrol, not that they're all younger, but that's where everybody starts and that's my group. And so we just brought on a chaplain and he's a retired homicide detective and we're going to steer him as he comes on board and starts to build relationships. We're going to steer him to be the chaplain just for the detectives and CSI, and that's also a group small enough where he can really get to know them all well and build meaningful rapport with them, where we have a couple other chaplains that are you know, me and another chaplain that are working specifically with patrol officers, and so I think about 100 or so is a good number for a chaplain.
Speaker 1:When we look at the amount of clergy compared to the amount of law enforcement and first responders in the nation. Do we have enough clergy? Do we have enough trained people out there helping us on the front lines?
Speaker 2:No. So you can do the math real fast If there's 800,000 cops, then you're going to need 80,000, maybe 40,000 chaplains. We have thousands of chaplains. We have thousands of good chaplains in the United States we do not have 40,000. We certainly do not have 80,000. And so we need tens of thousands of more chaplains.
Speaker 2:But the problem is with the demographics being the way they are, most clergy are baby boomers who are retiring or already retired, and so they are not going to become. You're not going to put the 80-year-old in the car with a 25-year-old. That can happen. It's probably not going to happen.
Speaker 2:And so if we're going to have chaplains going into the future, they're not going to primarily come from clergy because, first of all, even if every clergy member was a chaplain, we don't have enough of them, and many clergy would make terrible chaplains, because clergy are trained to talk and be the center of attention, and a chaplain has to be able to shut up and listen and wait on the sideline until they're asked to help, and that is so difficult for a lot of clergy to do.
Speaker 2:So there's only just a subset of clergy who would even make a good chaplain, and not all of those have the time or the desire to do that, and so you're talking about a very small sliver of a shrinking pool of clergy who could be chaplains, and we need tens of thousands of extra ones that we don't have.
Speaker 2:So my thinking is that we need to go out and find retired first responders who already have the cultural competency. They already understand what first responder culture is like, and it would be easier for me to take a retired firefighter and get them. You know, they maybe have to take a seminary class or two or be ordained or whatever is necessary, because I think that is important that they have the endorsement of a church organization. If they're going to give spiritual advice, if they're going to talk about what's the meaning of life and why do bad things happen and where's God in all this, they should have some training. But it's easier for me to take a retired firefighter, get them that training, teach them some crisis counseling and make them a chaplain than to produce clergy members out of thin air because they don't exist.
Speaker 1:Have you found that, since you've been doing this and you have been surrounded by these police officers and they've been surrounded by you for so long that you're finding them come to faith? Is there anybody coming and finding God and finding religion through your exposure to them?
Speaker 2:Yes, it's difficult as a chaplain, because if you're a chaplain for a public entity like a police agency, then you cannot by constitutional law, you cannot proselytize, you can't come in, and well, we all joke. You can go in and stand on a chair and preach and, you know, hit them over the head with a Bible one time and then you're going to be kicked out and you're going to have your credentials taken away and you're never going to be invited back in. Right?
Speaker 1:Wow, I didn't realize that that's a misconception, that I didn't realize. I didn't realize you guys couldn't do that.
Speaker 2:No Lemon versus Kurtzman. It was a Supreme Court case actually about, I think, a Catholic nun teaching at a public school. I think was the original circumstance, so correct me if I'm wrong on that, but Lemon versus Kurtzman, and sometimes referred to as the other Lemon law. The Lemon versus Kurtzman situation is basically, yes, a public entity, a public organization, like a school or the military or whatever, can have religious people working for them, but those religious people can't force their religion on someone else.
Speaker 2:The wonderful place it carved out, though, is that if the people in—so with the police department a police department can have a chaplain, they can actually employ a chaplain even though almost all police chaplains are volunteers, but they can actually have a chaplain on staff and pay him a salary, but he can't force his faith on the other employees. If the employees come to him—and he can talk about anything he wants he can answer any question. He can answer it from his point of view. If he's a Christian, he can give a Christian answer. If he's Jewish, he can give a Jewish answer, but he cannot go in and use his position funded by the government, even if it's not funded by—if he has access because the government allowed him to have access as a volunteer. He can't use that to force his religion on other people, and that's where the balance is have you had people come to you to find faith.
Speaker 2:Yes, so. So if you go in with an agenda, if you have an ulterior motive, there's no group that's going to snip that out faster than a bunch of cops. Amen, okay, and so. So if you come in thinking I'm going to convert all these, these rascals, then, sorry, they're going to see you coming from a mile away and and it's not going to work. But if you build rapport and show them that you love them, you trust them, you you are willing to spend time with them, you're willing to invest in them, no matter how they act, no matter what they do, no matter where they're from, no matter what their skin color, ethnicity, background, religious background, whatever it is if you show them that you really love them, then they may come to you.
Speaker 2:And I've seen that I've baptized police officers. I've had religious conversations. Funny enough, sometimes I'll have a religious conversation with them and they go to a different area of religion than where I'm from, and so I'm not Catholic. But I talk to the Catholic police officer, he starts attending mass again. Well boy, did that work or that not work? I'm not sure. I think it's a success. Okay, that's not exactly what I would want. I would want everyone to believe exactly what I believe, but as a chaplain, as a chaplain, really, my goal is to steer people, sometimes just nudge them, in the right direction.
Speaker 1:and going back to the faith of their youth is better than wallowing in nothingness, you know we've done a lot of episodes I think I'm at 80 or 81 now and one of our most popular episodes is called Faith on the Front Line and in that episode it's myself a police officer who in recent years has really got into studying the Bible. And then we have one of our pastors at our local church who was also involved in that conversation. It's a three-way conversation dealing with faith in law enforcement, faith in first responders, faith in your corporate workplace and what is it like to be a church on Sunday yet go into your work environment where maybe you feel like you're the odd man out, and how do you portray your faith? And then we fielded some questions from listeners that would ask some questions and stuff, and that was one of our most popular episodes.
Speaker 1:So, while this is not a Christian podcast, I'm definitely a believer and I don't steer away from it. So I really appreciate you being willing to have those open, honest conversations with me tonight, both not so much Bible preaching and Bible thumping, but just a nice, well-balanced conversation. It was very, very nice to have that conversation. I want to end it like this have you ever witnessed an officer lose faith, either in themselves, in the job and in God. What did that look like? What happened? And for those out there maybe experiencing that, where can they go?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've actually touched on it a little bit already. It's called a moral injury. You got into this job to be a first responder, to specifically be a police officer, because you wanted to help people and you had helping fantasies of this is what it's like I'm going to shoot the terrorist and rescue the hostages, I'm going to rescue that little kid from the horrible home that that child's living in and I'm going to take them somewhere safe. This is what you've imagined yourself doing a thousand different ways, and sometimes you take a bullet doing it or you jump in front of the car and the car hits you instead, but you've imagined being the helper. The problem with those fantasies is that once you've put on the uniform and you've been a cop for about five minutes, you get called out to calls where the damage is already done and the harm has already occurred and there was nothing you could do to stop it. There was nothing you could do to undo it. You're just there to stand over the dead body. You're just there to hear the screams of those who've been hurt, and that is damaging in a way that we call a moral injury. You had an expectation about who and what you were, and reality has taken that from you, and so you're not the person who was going to—you thought you were going to rescue, you thought you were going to save the day and you didn't get to do that. And so who are you and what are you and what does that mean? And why does God keep allowing this to happen? And so those questions, and sometimes it becomes very personal and you have doubt in yourself.
Speaker 2:I've had officers who said you know, boy, I'm not the man I thought I was going to be. This is miserable. I'm just going around and basically collecting the dead bodies. I'm not solving anything. I'm not making any kind of difference. My wife thought that she was marrying a hero. Maybe she married the wrong guy, and so the doubt is turned inward. Sometimes the doubt is turned upward and it's like Sometimes the doubt is turned upward and it's like I see so much misery and so much grief and it's so much human suffering. Why would God let this happen? And they don't have a well-developed theodicy, which is an understanding of why God maybe don't even know the term, and so they start to doubt God and shift work gets in the way of attending church.
Speaker 2:It is really hard to be a police officer in your first 10 years and attend church every Sunday. It can happen. I've known officers who've made it work, but it's really, really difficult and even if you intended to keep going to church or to start going to church, those shifts just keep getting in the way and then forced overtime and all kinds of other stuff. It's just not reasonable to get yourself there on a regular basis and so you're disconnected from other people who believe. You have questions about why God is allowing these bad things to happen and it just gets overwhelming and bitterness and cynicism begin to set in. It's just really hard, and this is not unique to first responders. But first responders have a job that breeds cynicism and they have a job that robs them of some of that hope quicker than a lot of other jobs do.
Speaker 2:I feel like a lot of church pastors actually can really identify with the loneliness and the despair and the human misery that you're exposed to. That first responders have, but not all jobs have that, and so they lose that trust in God, that God is actually good. Maybe they don't believe in God anymore. More likely they're angry with God that God allows so much misery to happen and for them to have to have witnessed so much of that misery, and so it's a pretty common dynamic. It happens a lot.
Speaker 2:I see a lot of church-going young 21-year-olds who go into the police academy and they become non-church-going 30-year-olds who aren't sure if God is real, and that dynamic occurs a lot. Now, if they can hang in there, a lot of them actually recover that faith. It's not unusual for a 20-year-old to not go to church, regardless of their occupation. But if they start having kids and maintain a marriage relationship and a couple of those dynamics start to work in your favor, some of them do come back to their faith. Naturally, it's just the progression that they follow. Others are probably not going to get there. They're not going to recover that faith in themselves or their faith in their God without some kind of support or some kind of help. And that's where a chaplain is especially suited to answer some of those philosophical, theological questions that your clinician probably can't answer and your buddy down at the watering hole probably can't answer, and so that's just one more reason why a chaplain is is a good resource.
Speaker 1:I got three more questions for you and then I'm gonna let you go. If you're, if you are that person that's losing faith and you find yourself right now you're at the fork in the road I was at, you're suicidal or you're PTSD and you don't know what to do. What advice would you give that person if they were listening to you, to this podcast, right now?
Speaker 2:it is not reasonable or rational to take a permanent step to address a temporary problem. That's the first thing. Okay, I know it hurts, really bad right now. That is real. You're not making it up, you're not crazy. It does hurt, but hurt doesn't last forever. And so do not do something permanent. Do not, do not leave your family, do not quit your job, do not take your life for something that is temporary. Let's, let's wait a minute, let's take a take a pause. That is critical. Okay, giving yourself time to figure out, because you might lose a relationship and you might leave a job. That could happen and we all die someday, but none of that has to happen today. And so let's not do anything permanent for something that's almost certainly temporary, even if temporary is going to be for years, because some situations do not resolve quickly but don't do anything permanent for something that's temporary. That's the first step.
Speaker 1:Million dollar, question that we could spend an entire week talking about. Why does God let bad things happen?
Speaker 2:I mentioned a minute ago that that is called theodicy. It's an entire section of theological and philosophical thinking that has existed for centuries and centuries, because people have always asked this question, and I think Christianity actually addresses it better than most other philosophies and religions. In Christianity it doesn't deny that evil exists and it doesn't purport that God is just capriciously randomly dishing out good and evil left and right. You never know what's going to happen next. Instead, you have a good God, but that evil is the absence of creation, of people, of situations. The things that God created are not always aligned with him, and when they're not aligned with him, that causes evil. And so why does God let that happen? Maybe he should just mind, control them and force them all to do his will.
Speaker 2:The answer is free will. We have the free will to do good and evil, and if we didn't have that free will, none of the good things that you appreciate would matter. Because when I stood up in front of a church and asked you know, I said I do to my wife and she said I do back to me in the day we got married, her I do only meant something, because she could have said I won't If she was forced. If someone had a gun to her head or whatever, it would not have meant very much. Okay, if she had been mind controlled and was piloted like a robot, I mean I can't believe people are falling in love with AI and whatever you know. Think I got an AI girlfriend? No, you don't. It's been programmed to talk to you a certain way.
Speaker 2:That is a dead end and it's not meaningful. It's not meaningful to you a certain way. That is a dead end and it's not meaningful. It's not meaningful. It's only meaningful that my wife has picked me, because she has not picked four billion other men, and so that free will allows good things, like love, to exist, but it also allows a person to do something bad, and so I think that evil exists because of free will. I think that God wants love to exist. Therefore, evil in this broken version of creation that we have right now, those things are going to have to exist side by side, and so God allows that to exist because he wants the other benefits of free will to exist also.
Speaker 1:Thank you and final question softball.
Speaker 2:Anything else you want to say before we get off here, any final thoughts? Um, normalize talking about this stuff. I'm glad that you listened to this podcast. I'm glad that you are willing to get this far and listen to some of these topics being brought up. But normalize it.
Speaker 2:Don't keep this to yourself. Go tell other people about this episode. Go tell other people about this podcast. Make sure that they're looking into these things.
Speaker 2:Because if I can get one of my police officers 25 years old, hotheaded, thinks he knows everything, doesn't want to talk to a chaplain but if I can get him to listen to a podcast like this at four o'clock in the morning, as things are starting to die down a little bit if I can get him to listen to this and to contemplate and to start putting labels on things you know labels on how he feels, labels on what kind of man he wants to be, labels on what's happening to him and why he's acting and reacting the way he is If I can get him to listen to these conversations, that's one step closer to getting him to talk about this. And so don't keep this to yourself. Go find one other person and say, hey, I listened to this podcast. You've got to come listen to this too, and then that'll lead to the next podcast, that'll lead to the next one. That'll lead to the next one.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, jared. Thank you for taking the time to come and talk to me and my guests and get this message out there. I don't know where this podcast is going. I don't know. I don't know where this podcast is going. I don't know where God is going to put this, but I've just got faith that it's going to get in front of the right people at the right time for the right message. And, uh, you know, like I told you the other day, I don't think God has given me my pain without a purpose and this is just part of that process and candid conversation. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1:Jared mentioned early on. He has a very, very successful podcast. It is on all streaming platforms. It's called hey Chaplain, check it out. He's got lots of guests on his show, everybody from LAPD to Scotland Yard. Check it out. It's a great show and give him the support and love that you show me. Hopefully you guys enjoyed tonight's show. It was a little bit different. It's kind of a follow-up to our Faith on the Front Lines and I really appreciate having Jared. We'll have him back in the future. We love you guys so much. Ladies and gentlemen, that is a Murders to Music podcast.
