The Daily ICPC Spokane: There and Back Again (w/ Jeremy Hockett)

Welcome to the Daily ICPC; This is a limited podcast series from Hey Chaplain, which follows police chaplains Jared Altic and Jeremy Hockett to Spokane, Washington, to attend the annual training seminar of the ICPC, the International Conference of Police Chaplains.  This series provided a daily, behind the scenes look at the convention, and this is our after action review episode, the end of the second season of this miniseries.  

Links:

Relational Wisdom 360:  rw360.org

ICPC: https://icpcchaplains.org

Follow the Daily ICPC on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/heychaplainpodcast/

Music is by Everet Almond

The Daily ICPC Episode MS.2.6, by Hey Chaplain

Tags:

Chaplains, Airports, Caffeine, Classes, Conventions, Humor, ICPC, Podcasting, Police, Relationships, Training, Wellness, Spokane, Iowa, Washington

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, this is Tom Roy. I'm here with Jared Altic, and I'm uh at the conference for the ICPC. I serve as a special chaplain for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in Minnesota. Welcome to Hay Chaplin.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

This is Don Higgins. I'm the senior chaplain with the Tracy Police Department in Tracy, California. You are listening to Hey Chaplin.

SPEAKER_03 0:24

Welcome to the Daily ICPC. This is a limited podcast series from Hey Chaplin, which follows police chaplains Jared Altic and Jeremy Cockett to Spokane, Washington to attend the annual training seminar of the ICPC, the International Conference of Police Chaplains. This series has provided a daily behind-the-scenes look at the convention. And this is the after action review episode, the end of season two. Hello, Jeremy. How are you? Hi, Jared. It's good to see you again, buddy. It's good to see you too. Been about a week uh at the time of this recording since we've been home.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:04

And had some time to digest all of the wonderful things that happened in Spokane and uh thought we'd catch people up on how things went. The last they heard in episode five was us saying goodbye as we arrived at the airport. At the airport. Yep. Now, what people don't know is that began the longest walk of my life. Where because we're like, we're like, we got to the edge of the airport, and Jeremy's like, get out. So so Drew and I, we grab our bags and get out and look. I'm like, well, I don't see Southwest Airlines here anywhere. And but we did find Delta and United and Frontier and Alaska.

SPEAKER_04 1:49

We'll see if you ever go back. If you ever go back, you already know where that's at.

SPEAKER_03 1:53

There's no guesswork, no surprises. We walked and we walked and we walked and we finally, finally get to Southwest, which is on the far other end of the airport. And we we get there and and Drew stepped aside, maybe to use the restroom or something, but but Drew stepped aside for a moment, and then I look up and here comes Jeremy walking in the door, fresh, strolling in from the rental car place. I'm like, you've got to be kidding me.

SPEAKER_04 2:18

Uh I told my wife, I said I felt really bad about that. I should have just let you guys go with me all the way back to rental return because it would have been closer.

SPEAKER_03 2:26

We could have returned the car with you and been closer to our check-in. Yeah. So that's funny. Oh, live and learn. But we we did get to see you there because you had some time to kill. I didn't. And so we actually did, you know, a little behind the scenes here. We said goodbye, and then we spent like the next hour together.

SPEAKER_04 2:42

Yeah, it's a good way to good way to kill time in an airport when you got somebody to talk to. Yeah. And both flights, I sat next to people that didn't want to talk. So oh really? Yeah. I kind of enjoy visiting with people when I'm on a flight, but everybody now carries earbuds with them, and they uh they they they just tune everybody else in the plane out with them.

SPEAKER_03 3:02

I had my first flight sat next to a lady that had been in some sort of bicycle race in Idaho and crashed. Oh she was injured. And so I was like helping her put her bag up in the overhead compartment and that kind of thing. She was banged up. I mean, skinned head to toe, bandages, you know, really banged up. And then the second flight, uh I I might have had the road myself again. Again, yeah, yeah. It was uh it's a lot of empty seats, a lot of empty seats, and no one wants to sit next to me. So I don't know if I smell funny or or what, but uh but no, it's assigned seating. It's assigned seating down southwest. So so no, there's just luck of the draw, I guess. Yeah. Nobody, nobody next to me.

SPEAKER_04 3:47

No, I have full flights both ways and every plane. I don't think there was an empty seat either any of the flights.

SPEAKER_03 3:54

Yes, and for those scoring at home, our flights were pretty much on schedule and uneventful. There were terrible storms that day in Denver, but we got through it basically fine and and went well, and we got home safely. It got it was a late night getting in that night, but but we got home safe, and I assume you did too. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:14

Got got back into Wichita about 11:30, and uh my wife and my oldest daughter picked me up at the airport and got me home very quickly after that. So yeah, good trip home.

SPEAKER_03 4:25

Coming home, it also gave me some time to process some of my notes. Now, I am not an official representative for ICPC, but people interact with me a lot, and so sometimes I in fact I kind of felt for a while like I had a must had like an invisible sign on my back that said, you know, complaint department. Right. And so anything wrong with the hotel or like the room or whatever, I feel like people were coming to me. And I'm like, I can't really help you. I guess I can I can introduce you to the person who might be able to help you. But but I did take notes and I was like, okay, is there anything that the education committee could look at? You know, if a class had to be uh canceled and replaced, or if an instructor had to be substituted for a different instructor, were any of those things things that were preventable, or you know, why did that happen? And so I took quite a bit of notes on just the logistics of putting together a training conference. Okay. Uh hopefully, you know, if I can, you know, contribute something significant, you know, if I if I can say, like, hey, I think I figured something out, or I think I see I'm seeing a pattern or or whatever. I I want to try to see that and diagnose it if I can. I don't know if that'll be of use to anyone or not.

SPEAKER_04 5:42

But well, I'm guessing, I'm guessing after you introduced your idea of having a firefighter show up to help us speed things up during the banquet, yeah. They might be listening to your ideas. Yeah, that may have destroyed my credibility.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

I said I was coming up with solutions. I didn't say I was coming up with good solutions. Okay, right, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:01

As long as we recognize the difference there.

SPEAKER_03 6:03

Yeah, yeah. And I I know from helping with conventions and conferences from I mean, 20 or 25 years ago I was helping with stuff. Uh, working behind the scenes at big events like this, it there's a thousand things that can go wrong. And and it takes quite a bit. If if you if you attend a successful conference, there was probably a whole team of people working, yeah, you know, burning the candle at both ends. Guaranteed. Working to make things work. Guaranteed.

SPEAKER_04 6:32

Yeah. And and they don't do it because they want recognition, you know. They they they do what they do because they like helping people.

SPEAKER_03 6:39

Well, and a lot of them are volunteers. Absolutely. A lot of them are not getting paid, even. What I don't want to do is take all these observations and some of the complaints I collected and dump that back as a complainer. Right. And be like, you did five things wrong. Yeah. Well, they did 200 things right, you know, and I I don't want to be negative, but like I said, I'm trying to digest that and process it a little bit. What's it like for you after you get back from a conference?

SPEAKER_04 7:08

Well, this year was really strange for me. Got home in good shape and everything. Saturday morning. It's like everywhere I went, people were pointing. People were coming up, wanting to shake my hand. They're like, You're the other guy on Hey Chaplin. And then I woke up.

SPEAKER_03 7:28

All right, and I had breakfast, and I came to the office, and you know. I was wondering, I'm like, where were you that you were running into people? Yeah, that's funny. That's funny. Yeah, I don't get that. And I'm the main voice on Hey Chaplin. But yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:44

But no, seriously, you know, and I think I mentioned this in one of the other episodes. You know, when I go to these trainings, I expect, you know, having been doing it this long, I expect some of the class material, you know, this it's it's great refresher, great refresher. Right. I'm always looking for uh something that's that's new and challenging and something I can dig into a little deeper. This year for me, uh that was uh uh a young man by the name of Ryan Ward. Uh he came from a place called Relational Wisdom, and uh he had a couple of really good classes, and they offer stuff online where you can go and take classes. And uh I've already talked to my wife. We're planning on taking some of those classes together. Oh wow. And uh yeah, just uh seeing what's out there and and uh how it can help us.

SPEAKER_03 8:32

Also, I'm looking for stuff because I take classes on Chaplain C all the time. Yeah, so I'm not only am I looking for fresh perspectives, but I'm also looking for updated information. Okay. Again, from the education committee, I know for a fact that we're gonna evaluate all of the basic classes, all the core classes that we do. Okay. But then we are already working on one of them because there's updated information. Yeah. And we don't want to teach something with the wrong data or outdated information, and we don't even want to teach something that's just using the lingo from 10 years ago or 15 years ago. Sometimes you get like buzzwords and concepts and whatever that that this is how it's all was taught. Well, sometimes that stuff is refreshed and we don't want to be lagging behind. And so that's a project that you know will be on my plate uh coming up, is looking at some of those and helping to uh you know compare notes with other people on the education committee to to try to keep those things updated. That's great. So looking ahead, we are going to have some offerings for ICPC members. If if you're a member, even if you didn't attend Spokane, they have training available to them that is coming up every month that they can access. And so that's called the uh monthly chaplain enrichment trainings. Yes. And those are Zoom meetings, and we recruit a different ICPC instructor every month to teach a different topic every month, and you get credit, you get continuing education credit for it. It's you know, one hour, 0.1 you know, CEUs that that you get credit for that could go toward your credentials and and that kind of a thing. And so so I'm hosting that training every month. And so you get to hear my voice and uh see my face in the Zoom meeting if uh if ICPC members you know participate in that. We'd like people too. We've had good groups the last few months. I want to say maybe 60 or 70 people in a group. It's on a Thursday afternoon. We'd love to have people uh get into that because that'll be every month. We don't plan to take any months off, and so so that'll be every month for the next year or so. We've got it lined up. And you've been in those, haven't you? Yes, yes. I have uh since they got those started back up this year. I have I've been to both of them. So yeah, fantastic. And then next year, the annual training seminar is gonna be in Iowa City. So it's gonna be in Iowa, and that's right. I mean, that's pretty centrally located for almost everybody. Yep. And so I'm I'm really hoping that a lot of people who felt like uh Spokane is great as an idea, but it's so far away, I don't think I can get to it. I'm hoping there's people who can fly and drive and otherwise get to Iowa. And I'm also kind of optimistic that maybe it'll be very affordable. I'm hoping. Yeah. Uh there's certainly some places that we could have the convention where it would be expensive to get to or expensive to stay at. I'm kind of hoping it'll be, you know, affordable. Yeah. Do you have any plans to go?

SPEAKER_04 11:42

And as of right now, Jared, I am I am definitely planning on being there for that one. So and it's close enough.

SPEAKER_03 11:49

I'm I'm I will buy I will drive that one. So yeah, I'm gonna try to drive it too. I'm hoping to bring my wife, and I'm hoping to bring multiple people. I would like to get all of our chaplains to go. Uh several have done ICPC things in the past, but I don't know if they've kept their membership up. I'd like, I'd like to get them to go to another annual training seminar. I mean, it's just a week of really high-end training. I want them, I want them to have that. Yeah. And then I also want to try to get some of our officers to go and to to start planning now a year out. Let's start, let's start putting this on the schedule and get some people like a wellness officer, anybody that might be a chaplain coordinator in the future or something like that. Because there's a credential that they can earn in one week. Uh, we have a liaison credential that ICPC offers. And so you can take all the basic chaplain classes, all those core classes, and then there's four more 90-minute classes that are called liaison classes. You have to apply to be a member, and then you take all those classes, and then you'd have, I think, 19 more hours, because that'd be 21 hours. So you need 40 hours total, and then you can apply for a chaplain liaison credential. Have that on your resume and and use that as, you know, hey, this is this is how I'm gonna be on the wellness team, right? This is how I'm gonna be the wellness coordinator for my agency or something like that. It'd be it'd be a good credential. We have people that take those and they're like, now I really understand what the chaplains do and yeah, and how they operate or how they should operate.

SPEAKER_04 13:28

Yeah, he's not just the guy that shows up at roll call with a box of donuts.

SPEAKER_03 13:31

That's right. That's right. That's right. And so, well, I mean, I think a lot of people fake it, you know, they they uh they've seen a chaplain, they have some vague ideas of what chaplains do or where they've witnessed chaplains working, yeah, but they don't really understand, you know, why does a chaplain do what they do and what you know legal framework do they operate under, and yeah, and and what are all the nuances. Most people don't know that. That's true. So if you took if you took a week of courses on it, you'd be pretty well. You should be hey. You should have a pretty good understanding by that point. Yeah, absolutely. Jeremy, thank you so much. I appreciate you being my partner on this mini-series.

SPEAKER_04 14:14

Thanks, Jared. I thoroughly enjoyed working with you on this. I said earlier that I was gonna be disappointed if you didn't ask me to help you again next year. You said Ward made the same comment last year, so me and Ward may just be taking over next year. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 14:31

I don't know. The last day I interviewed Deb Growe briefly, and I'm like, wow, she's good on a microphone. So I was a little bit more. That may be like a three-way competition.

SPEAKER_04 14:39

Yeah. I I would probably have to just step back and let Deb have it. That's fantastic. Well, thank you, Jeremy.

SPEAKER_03 14:47

Jared, it was a pleasure. Thank you so much. So recently home from Spokane, Washington, this is Jared Altic with Jeremy Hawkett. And this was the daily ICPC from Hey Chaplin. And as always, let's pray for peace in our cities. Amen. So do you burn vacation time to go to these? Is is your church look at it as this is uh you know educational, this doesn't count against your vacation, or is it vacation time for you?

SPEAKER_04 15:23

No, it's not vacation time. I I get uh they're very gracious with me when it comes to stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 15:29

So yeah, yeah. Yeah, and say same for me. Same for me. They're they're very considerate. They don't mind, especially if I'm not missing a Sunday. Yeah, uh, they don't mind and even if I did, they're they're pretty generous with me. Yeah. But I know a lot of folks, it's it's difficult. They can only be out of town just so many days. Yeah. And that that's that's a challenge.

SPEAKER_04 15:49

No, I don't have that problem here.

SPEAKER_03 15:50

It's it's pretty good here. How about with uh Chaplain C is a sheriff's office able to cover things when you're out of town? Yeah and out of pocket.

SPEAKER_04 16:00

Yeah, yeah, it doesn't uh doesn't doesn't stretch them at all for me to be gone. So I I don't take calls like you do, so oh yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:10

Yeah, at the time of recording this, I had I've had three fatality accidents three nights in a row. Yeah. And I'm the chaplain on call. And so last night in particular, I was out from like like 11 p.m. till about three in the morning. Busy, busy, busy. So yeah. Did you ever have a a particular like travel snack that you go for? I mean, do you just eat whatever pretzel they hand you?

SPEAKER_04 16:35

You know, I honestly this trip I didn't even take any of the airline snacks at all. Oh, really? And I got home and I told my daughter that, and she was like, I can't believe you did that.

SPEAKER_03 16:47

She thought that was just weird. Yeah, see, I've I've always been a snacker, but I don't care for pretzels and whatever weird little Hawaiian flavored pretzel thing they are doing on Southwest now, I have no interest in at all. And uh and then uh but they do have graham crackers. Oh so occasionally, I don't know if it's time of day or or what, but but they'll occasionally give you a little package of graham crackers. Okay, well, I'll I'll take that.

SPEAKER_04 17:14

Yeah, yeah. I don't even know. I f I flew United, so I'm not even sure what they were offering. Yeah, drink service? Do you get a soda? I just water. Just water, really. Yeah. I don't like to drink caffeine afternoon most of the time. So okay. In fact, when we were at the banquet the other night, I don't know how Drew ended up, but we were drinking decaf coffee, I thought. Oh, really? But after the banquet, I did have significant trouble going to sleep. So I think they slipped me a uh full caffeine coffee, at least one of the cups I drank.

SPEAKER_03 17:49

Well, I'm pretty sure that he does the same thing. I don't think he has caffeine in the afternoon, you know, past lunch.

SPEAKER_04 17:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:55

And so so I don't I don't recall, but he was a good roommate. Man alive. He just talk about somebody that's that's courteous and is friendly, but also like you know, respect your space. And uh man, I'd I'd room with him anytime. It was very easy to room with with Drew Ashwell.

SPEAKER_04 18:13

Yeah, yeah. I enjoyed uh I enjoyed meeting him, spending some time with him. That was fun.

SPEAKER_03 18:19

Well, I liked I liked connecting with with Adam Wooten from Hutchinson. Yep. That was good because we had we had uh dinner with him one night. Yep. That was that was good. And just just the number of people that we were able to sit down and chat with, like Pam Neal and and Jay Wynne Shasson and just people like that. It just just a pleasure to hang out with them and get to know them better.

SPEAKER_04 18:43

And the more times you go back to these, the more people look at you like I'm pretty sure I know who you are, but you know, and there's not usually a problem with somebody coming up to starting a conversation, you know.

SPEAKER_03 18:55

So I but I'm in danger because especially if I'm standing like at a at a hay chaplain table. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:02

People come up and they'll be like, hey Jared, and I'm like, Hey, you yeah, you have the you have the voice that everybody recognizes, and you are required to remember their names.

SPEAKER_03 19:15

Oh my. And that happens at church too. Somebody comes for Easter two years ago, and they spent an entire morning listening and watching you. Yeah, but they were in the crowd, yeah. And it's like, I don't remember so-and-so's second cousin's neighbor that came to Easter two years ago. And then they'll run into me at Walmart and they're offended that I don't remember their name. And I'm like, I I'm sorry, it's not humanly possible. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, only so much capacity there. Yeah, yeah. And I I actually work on that, but man, I I I I have made it a mission at church to try to be outside greeting people as they come in. Yeah, and as best I can, I'll call them by name and and make sure I have that ingrained in there, you know, try to try to put names and faces together because it doesn't come natural. Yeah, there are people who just just get it, and I I struggle with that, especially people's kids. Uh, because kids are so annoying in how they keep growing. Yeah, right. Uh and so and so you think you got somebody's family figured out, and then you blink, and they've all grown a foot. Yeah, and and you lose track of which one's which. That's really different.

SPEAKER_04 20:33

We had an instance here several years ago. We hired in an associate pastor in, and one of the men of the church took it upon himself to stand next to him as she he was shaking hands with people going out the door and was purposely calling people the wrong name, just so he would have a hard time remembering people.

SPEAKER_03 20:54

No, what it's just just being just being artery, yeah. Okay, God bless you. That's terrible. Yeah, that's oh, that's terrible. I feel desperate to try to learn people's names. And I that that is something I I would suggest to the office. I think you mentioned it while we're up there. The name tags that we wear have a lot of information on the front. Yep. And I would I would love for someone's name to be in much bigger print than everything else. Yeah. Where you can really spot it from a distance as they're walking versus having to, you know, you're you go to shake their hand and then you have to lean over at the waist to look at their name tag. That's I can't read fine print if I'm trying to be friendly and desperately researching my memory banks to remember somebody's name. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 21:48

But there are a few. You know, you have you have classes with them multiple times, and you strike up those conversations, and it gets a little easier to remember.

SPEAKER_03 21:57

And making connections because I'm at a stage of my life where I mean part of me is very introverted, but part of me too. If I'm gonna travel, man, I'd like to go have dinner with somebody I know. Yeah, you know, I'd like to go, you know, connect. I mean, sure, I'll I I still want my time just me and the wife on the beach or whatever by ourselves, but then I also would love to go, you know, have lunch and meet up with somebody that I know in that city. And so I'm I'm desiring that more and more at this stage of my life. I get that. I I feel the same way. Well, you know, we had that thing here just a while back. I was driving across Kansas and looking at a map, it's like, man, I can swing down through Emporia. Yeah, and it barely adds any time. Now, Emporia was still probably an hour, hour and a half drive for you. Hour and a half, probably. Yeah, yep. So, Jeremy, I'll have lunch with you if you don't mind driving an hour and a half one way to get there. Yeah, it was worth it.

SPEAKER_04 22:53

Yeah, one thing I'm really excited about, but I don't remember if I told you this or not, but here in Wichita, we are in the process of combining our uh some of our wellness units. Yeah, and so so different agencies combining their wellness units. Yes, yes. They're working on a building right now to uh bring together the police department, the sheriff's office, fire department, EMS, dispatch a couple of other agencies to bring us all under one roof as far as our our wellness uh program. So we're gonna have excellent yeah, we're gonna have all kinds of things uh changing here in the near future.

SPEAKER_03 23:35

So like classroom space and maybe like office space?

SPEAKER_04 23:40

Office space, yeah, classroom space will have some of that. Uh they're even telling us that we're gonna have our own gymnasium.

SPEAKER_03 23:47

So really workout equipment. See, because that's a great way to casually catch people. If if they're working out, yeah, and they know, well, hey, the wellness coordinator and the chaplain and somebody else is just right down the hall there. If I wanted to intercept them, I could, or vice versa. You know, that that's that's fantastic. Versus versus you know, have the chaplain's office like right down the you know, right around the corner from the chief's office. Yeah, that's and no one's going down that hallway if they don't have to, you know.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

Exactly.