139.5 - I could have used a Chaplain: Phil Reeves

Today we're talking again to Phil Reeves. This is part two of my conversation with Phil.  In part one we talked about his background, in which he has been a working actor in Hollywood for decades while also serving as a police officer.  We talked about the fun stuff last time, here in part two we're going to be talking about the tougher stuff: difficult moral and ethical decisions in leadership, ending a career, and starting a new one as a police chaplain.  Phil has become a major voice across the country advocating for officer wellness and the intelligent and professional use of police chaplains.  You're going to want to hear the experiences on the street that led him down this path.

Music is by Chris Haugen

Hey Chaplain Podcast Episode 139.5 (Part 2)

Tags:

Police, Acting, Career, Certifications, Chaplaincy, Compromise, Death, Ethics, Imposter Syndrome, Scandal, Supervisors, Support, Training, New Orleans, California, Louisiana

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is a chaplain's daughter. Thank you for leaving a five-star rating and a written review. It really helps us out.

SPEAKER_03 0:07

And my admin basically wanted this guy gone. Uh, and I was just not willing to uh to do that. You know, it was he was a young guy, he had a great career ahead of him, he had a wife and kids, you know, pension and insurance, and I was not willing to throw him under the bus. And I just actually took some some training a couple months ago with FBI Lita with a couple of great chiefs who were teaching this class. And they both talked about, you know, when you start getting into administrative, when you start promoting up, one of the things you you probably need to think about before you do is what hills you might be willing to die on.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:50

You can bend, but you know, uh to some extent, but where what's the moral Rubicon for you? Yeah. You never know what that's gonna be, it or if it ever happens, but it's something certainly worthwhile to think about, I think, in advance.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Welcome to Hey Chaplin. My name is Jared Altic, and I'm a chaplain with the police department. The Hey Chaplin podcast is about talking to police officers who say, Hey Chaplain, I've got a story to tell and some hard-earned wisdom to share. The guests on Hey Chaplin come from across the world, from the LAPD to Scotland Yard. And they are sharing their wisdom with you so that you don't have to learn everything the hard way. Like my daughter said before the cold opening, anytime you give us a five-star rating and a positive written review, it really helps the show. Would you please do that on whatever podcast platform you're listening to this on? And then go to another podcast platform and do the same thing, and find us on YouTube and do the same thing, and then find us on Facebook and do the same thing and Instagram. The more you do that, the more it helps. Today we are talking again to Phil Reeves. This is part two of my conversation with Phil. In part one, we talked about his background, in which he has been a working actor in Hollywood for decades, while he also served as a police officer. We talked about all the fun stuff last time. Here in part two, we're going to be talking about some of the tougher things, the difficult moral and ethical decisions that come with leadership, ending a career in law enforcement, and starting a new one as a police chaplain. Phil has been a major voice across the country advocating for officer wellness and the intelligent and professional use of police chaplains. You're going to want to hear the experiences on the street that led him down this path. Here's Phil Reeves. How long did you serve across your law enforcement career?

SPEAKER_03 3:09

So I started in uh I got hired in very late 01 and then went full-time. I don't remember when, but I believe it was 04, uh, till 2013. Was very fortunate. I was able to promote up pretty quickly. So I went from patrol the whole time, but officer to uh corporal to training officer, uh, and then I left as a sergeant because, as you say, our agency was very small, just 25 sworn. Our admin was pretty shallow. So we had a chief, uh, a lieutenant, and then like five or six sergeants. So sergeants were the watch commanders on all the shifts. So I was ended up, you know, being the watch commander on the weekends uh in my capacity as a sergeant.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Not everything was was uh perfect and everything you wished it could have been as an officer. Uh tell me a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_03 4:07

Well, um as you know, uh there are no secrets in police departments, and I don't care how big the agency is, everybody knows everybody else's business. When you're 25 sworn, everybody knows they know your they know your underwear size, you know. Our agency in general um had a uh somewhat uh checkered history in the past, and I actually went through a difficult separation in in in 2013. Just very briefly, um, you know, as a supervisor, I had to do uh annual evaluations for my uh for my team. And I had a guy on my team who was a just an awesome police officer, but had no filter. I mean, he would tell anybody, and I don't care if you're the chief, you're the president, whoever you he'd just tell you straight up what his thoughts and feelings were. And if he had something to, you know, to criticize, he'd say it straight up, which did not go over well with our admin, but he hadn't never done anything that was, you know, even remotely a cost for separation. And my admin basically wanted this guy gone. Uh, and I was just not willing to uh to do that. You know, it was he was a young guy, he had a great career ahead of him, he had a wife and kids, you know, pension and insurance, and I was not willing to throw him under the bus. And I just actually took some some training a couple months ago with FBI Lita with a couple of great chiefs who were teaching this class, and they both talked about, you know, when you start getting into administrative, when you start promoting up, one of the things you you probably need to think about before you do is what hills you might be willing to die on.

SPEAKER_01 6:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:01

You can bend, but you know, uh to some extent, but where what's the moral Rubicon for you? Yeah. You never know what that's gonna be, it or if it ever happens, but it's something certainly worthwhile to think about, I think, in advance. Not that you're hyper-vigilant or you know, uh pessimistic or um cynical, because I think you've got to always, whether you feel that way or not, you've got to conduct yourself uh with hope and uh happiness as much as possible, enjoying your task.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Um But it but it is possible that you could be put in a moral situation where you either have to compromise your standards or you have to hurt your career. Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 6:48

And you know, I was very fortunate because I had this whole other life. So it wasn't like uh if I left law enforcement, I it wasn't like I needed the job and needed the income, and it was the only thing I could do. So I was and I recognized at the time exceedingly fortunate in that regard. Yeah. Perhaps that, you know, gave me a little extra backbone, I don't know, but uh, you know, I was not willing to uh you were not going to change someone's evaluation.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 7:19

Yeah. In an unfair and untoward manner. Uh just wasn't the right thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

And so I left. Let's clarify that. Let's clarify that. You you would not change their evaluation, and so that meant you would be punished because they were going to retire you.

SPEAKER_03 7:37

That's right. Yes. They wanted they wanted me gone, essentially. Right. Uh after that. Interestingly enough, the kind of golden parachute retirement happened as a result of as the investigations went forward into my conduct and so forth, it it became clear that admin was doing some ontoward things. Let me put it that way.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Ultimately, all your eyes were dotted. Your T so you've told me this story offline, and we're being very careful not to get into any of the weeds here. But your eyes were dotted, your T's were crossed. Yes. When they came after you, you had all your affairs in order. You everything, everything was correct, and so ultimately the worst they could do was retire you. Exactly. Okay. Exactly. Yeah. All right. And I won't make you say anything else. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Gotcha. Thank you. But but that does, it is cause for reflection. Uh, because you went through this and several other things in your career that were difficult to endure as an officer, as a human, as a human being. It just is like, man, I that this is a difficult moral decision. This is a tremendous stress to be under. Uh, what did that lead to then?

SPEAKER_03 8:55

Even though my separation, I think, was uh righteous on my part, and I felt actually good about how I conducted things. Uh, as I mentioned to you, you know, leaving patrol, leaving policing, I yeah, I felt like somebody just shot my dog. I I was just, it was really tough for me. And I uh this was not at the end of some 30-year career, but I just uh I just love the work. You can do so much good as a police officer for people. Yeah. So much good in ways that you can't even know.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:33

Uh will affect people positively for the rest of their lives.

SPEAKER_02 9:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:37

Um, and I could just every cop hearing this right now can probably in their own mind think of a bunch of incidents that they've been involved with for which that is true. Yeah. So I really had to take some time to um get over that hurt and that pain. Uh as I mentioned to you before, it was in hindsight, once I became chaplain, looking back 2020, it was one of those uh I could have used the chaplain moments. Yeah. Because actually, in the meeting that I had with admin uh when they basically suspended me, I wished I'd had a chaplain that I could have called into that meeting, who could have just sat there and been kind of a moral compass to listen to this conversation and not say anything, not take sides, but just being there as a moral, as a moral presence.

SPEAKER_00 10:26

Even to go and talk to someone later and debrief in a privileged environment where where that's safe to talk to that person, that would have been tremendously helpful for you to digest all of this. 100%.

SPEAKER_03 10:42

100%. And I mean, even having had that, I think, would have helped my metabolizing those events later after I'd separated. Maybe it would have gone quicker or more smoother or less, you know, it would have just been easier.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:57

Um, to have some kind of moral triangulation. I felt one of the most difficult parts of it was I felt completely isolated. Yeah. You know, people that were had been friends of mine were talking to me. You know, these were people that, you know, covered my six and I covered theirs. Yeah. I uh took some time to uh, you know, decompress and sort all this stuff out. And then some years later in 2017, um, the I ran across something, I forget where I read somewhere, that LA County was looking for chaplains to work with patrol, not with to work with their incarcerated folks, but to work with patrol, with the line folks. And I thought, hey, you know what? Having been through what I've been through, uh, and even as a supervisor, you're kind of a spiritual advisor in a way.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 11:47

Uh, you're a mentor and you are whether you know it or not.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:50

Exactly. Absolutely. And um, so I thought, hey, maybe this is a way that I could pay it forward a little bit. That kind of caused me to look back at times in my patrol days, uh, when I thought, hindsight being 2020, in that incident, I could have used a chaplain. I could have used a chaplain when this happened. And actually, I that's when I speak to uh folks about the importance of chaplaincy embed in law enforcement.

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Yeah, you've got several stories that you tell. I'd I'd like to hear them again if you'd tell them again now.

SPEAKER_03 12:25

The first one was I was working days, I got a call of a man down in this area. So I I'm I'm going in there and I'm looking around, and I can't, there's nobody. I can't find anything. So I'm I'm driving along and I just look to my side and I see a guy in a yard, and he's he's he's lying there. So I'm like, oh, this must be it. So I got on my unit and I go up, and it's one of these places that stores these big, huge dumpsters that you hydraulically lift on these cables up onto the back of a flatbed, right? Like a trash dumpster type place. And these cables are two inch, three-inch cables. Well, this guy, while he was working with this, a cable had snapped and hit him in the head and and mortally injured him. I could tell immediately, I mean, he was not all there, you know, and uh, you know, the agonal breathing and all that stuff, and I knew that he was dying. And uh I rolled fire uh an EMS, but they couldn't find it. They couldn't find where we were, and I went through this process of do I leave this guy here alone in his last moments to go flag down EMS who weren't probably not gonna be able to do anything for him, or just or just sit with him here. Now I don't know how much he was even aware that I was there, but that's what I chose to do. I chose to sit with him as he died. And um that really stuck with me. I could have used a chaplain to talk about, hey, was that the right choice? Uh, you know, um help me help me.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

It is a it is a poignant thing. I've done it. It is a poignant thing to be the only person with someone who's dying. Yes, and that it it it it affects you, whether you're a religious person or not. It is absolutely right, and particularly a total stranger, just a total, total stranger.

SPEAKER_03 14:32

Um, another time uh I was working nights as usual, got a heard about a call to our highway patrol about an accident on the freeway. Middle of the night, January, rainy and cold, go bombing out there, and I pull up on a car. There were two women and three children in this car, and they were out of their minds hysterical. And what had happened is the male driver, they'd had a flat and they pulled off, and the male driver had stepped out of the car, and there was a lip on the edge of the pavement of the freeway, and he kind of tripped over it right into the path of an oncoming big rig that struck him and killed him. And he was what his body was way down the freeway there. Yeah, just totally destroyed. Yeah. But this had happened right in front of this family. You know, CHP took a while to get there. You know, they were busy on a rainy bad night on the freeways. So I ended up loading all these folks in my squad car and taking them back to the station. And on the way back, uh, it just somehow occurred to me, I had dispatched, hey, I knew we had a chaplain. I'd never dealt with him before. I heard he was around somewhere. I said, Do we have a chaplain? Yeah. He was a deacon at our local Catholic church. Call him. I need him, have him meet me at the station. So that's what happened. I stayed with his family, and they were just out of their minds, uh, and understandably so. And in through the front door comes this poor chaplain, and he, his eyes got to be the size of saucers because I'm like, I was done, I didn't know how to deal with any of this stuff as a cop. You know, I'm sitting in the lobby with these people that are just completely distraught and grieving and in shock. And I said, Chaplain, thanks for coming. Good luck. I'll see you later. Yeah. If you need me, just let dispatch know. And off I went. Yeah. And the third incident happened not long before I retired. We had an active shooting just before Christmas at a large corporate headquarters in our city. And I don't know if you've ever been involved with an active shooting, but they are uh, it's particularly in large, you know, with a lot of people around, they are just massive incidents because you've got, you know, you got the shooter, you've got victims, you have witnesses. So we roll up to this place, and you know, dozens and dozens of people are coming running out, and you don't know whether they're uh witnesses or victims, or maybe there are other active shooters involved. You don't know what's what. And what it turned out that this guy had been um, the shooter had been uh skipped over for a promotion and had brought a bunch of guns to the Christmas party and went out to his car, got the guns and came in and shot all the people, you know, his boss and all the people he felt had had done him, done him wrong, and that ended up killing himself by the time our team got to him. But we had to keep everybody on scene um, you know, and get their statements. We had to, you know, it was a whole big investigatory process. The whole world shows up at these things too. I had FBI agents, you know, popping out of bushes with their little toys are us badges, you know. How did you get here? Have you been hiding in that bush for a week? Yeah. Um thank God. I appreciated them very much for everybody being there. But, you know, looking back, could have used a chaplain just to be with those people. And then the death notifications afterwards. I mean, this was uh, you know, 16, 20 hour day it ended up. And then just dealing with, you know, the the the entry team that had to deal with all the you know people that had been been killed and all the rest of that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Yeah, you could help the help the victims, help the officers who've been exposed to this, help with death notifications, help with debriefs, uh, yes, everything.

SPEAKER_03 18:19

Yeah, yes, yeah, yeah. So those are my three, could have used the chaplain stories, hindsight being 2020.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Yeah. Nowadays you are uh not only a chaplain uh for LA County, but you also help other people set up chaplaincy and that kind of thing. Tell me about that briefly.

SPEAKER_03 18:39

When I started in chaplaincy, um I had a massive case of imposter syndrome. Because I I did not know really what chaplains did. Yeah, and um, and neither did my agency. Uh and I tell you chaplains starting out, um, that's a two-edged sword. Um, on the one hand, the bad side is they don't know who you are and what you're doing there. On the good side, you can make your practice and your ministry whatever you want it to be. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

Uh so that's that's for a good chaplain, that freedom is great. For a bad chaplain, that's a bad, that's a dangerous combination.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

Exactly. And I sussed that out pretty soon. I realized pretty early on that people have put a lot of trust in you and confidence, and they're telling you about the the sometimes the deepest and darkest things in their lives. And you you can uh chaplain can cause harm, definitely, if you if you don't know what your lane is and you get ahead of your skis and you don't keep the humility of being able to say, hey, you know what? I I need to this person needs something more than I can offer. They need to go to a clinician or they need to go to you know a 12-step program or you know, some something to people that can help them in ways that I can that I can.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

A lot, a lot of chaplaincy is doing triage. You know, you're you're not the you're not the hero that there to save the day. You're just triage and helping people get on to where they will get help a lot of people. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 20:08

Yeah, or as I call it, you're a Rollodex on two legs. Yes, yes, yeah. You keep all of these resources and you go, oh, this guy can help you. You know, this culturally competent clinician can help you, or this, you know, right mentor, or even a peer support person that might be just you, you something about that person you're dealing with, go, hey, you know what? This this would be a good match to go talk to, you know, John Smith over here. There's just I think there'd be a symbiosis there. So I decided shortly after becoming a chaplain that I wanted to try to get the highest quality training I could, did a lot of research about it because I didn't know anything about it, and discovered that if you wanted to be a professional chaplain, either in the military or uh in healthcare these days, um, you had to become board certified. And board certification as a chaplaincy requires getting a master's in theology or an equivalent, and then doing um four units or 1,600 hours of a process called clinical pastoral education, which is basically a highfalutin word for a clinical internship. It's a supervised professional clinical internship. So I did that. I went and got my master's uh at the University of Dallas and um then got my CPE sat before a board, got got the thumbs up, and became board certified. With I was board certified through the a group called the National Association of Catholic Chaplains. And they all of these um accrediting board chaplaincy board certification organizations are starting to get more applications for public safety chaplaincy, which is great. There's something in the air. I think there's something going on where there's more interest in this.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:54

So I've ended up helping the NACC and some other folks develop uh attract. Towards certainly improving the kind of ad hoc hit and miss training that a lot of chaplains have now, steering it into a more acknowledged, uh nationally standardized, professionalized avenue, providing um credentialing that police agencies can rely upon when they're sussing out a new chaplain. Because, you know, our agencies are secular institution, government institution. Someone applies to them as a chaplain, and the agency doesn't know is this a good person or a bad person? Right. And if the chaplain is weird, they may think, well, that's just how chaplains are. Chaplains are just weird people.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

And we have to weed out the weirdos because 100%. This is not a criticism of the chaplains who maybe don't have super advanced degrees or credentialing that that they just weren't able to get, but they're nevertheless very good and effective chaplains. There are plenty of those we're in full support of you. Amen. But but the weirdos sneak in and and and every weirdo costs us, you know, that there are chaplain programs that get shut down in agencies because of one weirdo. Exactly. And so we have to try to filter out some of the people who are just not there for the right reasons. Absolutely. They have no aptitude for it. And some of those people have advanced degrees and whatever, but they still they have no aptitude, they have no, they do not have the right motive. And and what you're pushing for, and what I pushed for when you and I were presenting together for the IACP is is raising our expectations of what we want a chaplain to be. And one of the things is applying some of these filters that you were talking about.

SPEAKER_03 23:48

Absolutely. Yeah. As I've said many times, ordination does not necessarily a good police chaplain make. No. Right? No. Uh but it's not, and it's certainly not, I'm not talking about it's by any stretch of imagination as a disqualifier. But what uh and the thing about the the the volunteer chaplains who may not have had any of this training or advanced degrees or so forth, who could be providing awesome service to people. Those are actually the folks, if you say, hey, we want to step up this game, we want to provide additional training, we want to bring back they'll all be first in line.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

The first on board. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 24:25

Bring it on.

SPEAKER_00 24:25

I want more training, you know, like any other, you know, all the good chaplains I know want more training. Absolutely. And so that that's a test, that's a test right there. It's like, hey, we're gonna offer to send you to some training. Are you willing to go? And if you have someone that keeps saying no, that no, they're fine. They've already they've already come pre-packaged with everything you could possibly need. That's a red flag. Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 24:50

It's like good cops. The good cops want more training. Yes, they just bring it on, let's do it. Yeah, yeah, I love this. Let's I I'm I'm hungry for it. Yeah, uh, and the same is definitely true with chaplains for sure. Um, so at this point, um, I'm finding that I'm spending I'm still, you know, go to the station, spend time there. Uh I I have a a therapy dog now brought aboard through Guide Dogs of America. So my the the the face of my chaplaincy practice has changed a little bit because of the dog. But I'm spending more time, you know, uh so honored and privileged to do with you in New Orleans, you know, talking to these national uh bodies. Uh we talked about how the IACP, for example, has um just advanced a resolution for professionalizing chaplaincy uh for agencies across the US. And you know, I'm trying to I'm writing about it and speaking about it uh because a big part of our chaplaincy that people don't realize is not only are you making yourself available and accessible in presence to the you know patrol people, but you're also educating admin and command staff about how to utilize chaplain to their advantage, chaplaincy to their advantage. And a lot of agencies don't understand that quite yet. And I'm it's not, I'm not, you know, I get it. Uh it's it's it's a new thing, and there's leariness about church state entanglement and so forth, but it's one of those things we've talked about, you know, you and I've talked about before. You would explain this to your blue in the face, to admin and chiefs and sheriffs and so forth. They're probably not gonna get it until they experience it. And once they experience a good chaplain in their agency, they're like, wow, where has this been? Why haven't we been doing this since forever, since Robert Peel? We should have been doing this since Robert Peel.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

Yeah. The military, the military has been, but uh law enforcement's way behind the game. Uh in some places. In some places, there's exceptions, but uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Phil, thank you so much. Thank you, brother. Thank you. I appreciate uh your friendship. I appreciate what you do for chaplaincy, and I appreciate your service. And I appreciate you as an occasional travel buddy.

SPEAKER_03 27:07

Thank you, brother. Vice versa. Honored and privileged, man. God bless you and privileged. God bless you too, sir. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 27:16

I want to thank Phil for being on the show. And again, I want to thank him for traveling with me to New Orleans to speak to the IACP. I also feel like I should give a big thank you to Matt Domiensic. Matt Domienseik, the tactical chaplain, he is one of the reasons that I know Phil. He and Phil have worked together as chaplains, and also these two Southern California chaplains and this chaplain from Kansas City, all three of us have a like-mindedness about how chaplains should be trained and employed to improve officer wellness. So thank you, Matt. Knowing you has continued to pay dividends over and over again. The views expressed here are the personal views of the hosts and our guests, and do not necessarily represent the views of any law enforcement agency or its components. If you like this episode, please share it with a cop or someone who loves a cop. Thank you for listening to Hey Chaplin. And as always, let's pray for peace in our city.