Police Chaplains Today

I am going to challenge more than a few of you with this blog but I do so with only the best intentions. As a former pastor and missionary, my background in approaching police chaplaincy was fixed on the "spiritual" health of our police officers. In hindsight it should have been on the complete wellness of the officer and their family. It is the same comment I would make to those who insist on calling "holistic health" the go-to phraseology when it comes to wellness. Holistic health usually leaves absolutely no room for spiritual health. Similarly, mental health professionals often exclude the spiritual component when it comes to offering resources to our officers. I am not even sure it is intentional but rather an oversight caused by a lack of knowledge. The same lack of knowledge clergy often have when it comes to mental health. Now that I have stepped on all the toes I needed to step on, let me make my main point. While each potential resource competes for the at...

The other day a Calgary police officer was killed in the line of duty during the course of his regular duties. It appears as if he was making a traffic stop of a vehicle with a 17 year old driver and his 19 year old passenger. All the details and the guilt or innocence of these young men is yet to be determined. The fact is that the officer died. It reminded me of another incident I experienced as a police chaplain in Toronto a few years back. While doing a ride along in downtown Toronto the Sergeant I was with noticed that the back licence plate of a car we were approaching at a red light, had no sticker. He immediately pulled up beside the car who was about the 5th car in the lineup behind the light, and motioned him to pull over once the traffic cleared out of the way. We were in the curb lane but instead of pulling in front of us, the driver pulled into oncoming traffic and made a quick left turn to another major road. This was early evening on a Friday summer night but the roads w...

The award pictured here was given to me in 2018 for the work I do as a police chaplain. Although it is a Spartan Warrior, it also depicts the armour talked about in the New Testament of the bible. This award is handed out by a secular organization called Badge of Life Canada and their mission is to bring resources to first responders who struggle with mental health issues, usually related to work. In the world we live in most people accept that there is a need to maintain good physical health and today more than ever, good mental health. When you look at wellness programs within policing and pretty well any organization, these two aspects of "health" take priority. For some reason most want to overlook a third area of health: spiritual. More specifically for me it is the Christian faith that centres on a relationship with Jesus. We just celebrated Christmas and believe it or not, it is a reminder that Jesus Christ was born to bring healing to hurting people. He came to fix th...

We all know the line: you sound like a broken record. As I get older there is always the danger of me repeating myself unintentionally and having friends pretend they are hearing it for the first time. I realize I am close to that place already today and it is why I always hesitate to bring up the issue I am bringing again today. I do so however, after listening to 3 cops of various rank, all listing off resources to help our Toronto cops who are struggling with personal issues. Guess what resource was forgotten by each one? As I was listening I was actually trying to get the men being interviewed to say the word from behind my computer. How hard could it be to say that one resource that every division at TPS has? I was waiting but the word never escaped their lips. Pretty well every other resource was mentioned but not the one I have talked about over and over again in my blogs. I am also not going to use the word because I want you to figure it out yourself. This resource would help ...

A few weeks ago I spoke at a Zoom retreat for police and their spouses. The topic was Resiliency/Trusting in God. There were actually a few people who heard about the upcoming sessions and complained to the organizer for one simple reason: we had the audacity to be helping cops. After hearing about that I knew that the topic was an appropriate one for the season most cops are going through today. I taught from God's word because it has plenty to say about the topic. Some of you may be surprised to hear that because many police services still believe that only mental health professionals should be made available to their men and women. It is a barrier that is extremely difficult to get through because it has been in place for many years. The stress being put on police families today is something never seen before although the instigators of this have been working long and hard to see this day. I won't get into the topic of enablers but we all know that the media in general, is n...

If you are White and want to crucify every cop that puts on a uniform, please play along with me for just a few seconds. First you need to establish your utter distain for the racism evident among police everywhere, especially in Toronto, where the Ontario Human Rights Commission proudly announced that Toronto cops shoot and kill Black people with regularity. The fact that this narrative is an absolute lie does not matter because we don't care about the truth. OK, so here we go...Ted Bundy was a serial killer in the US. He was a white man. As far as we know, he acted on his own when he kidnapped, raped and murdered innocent women back in the 1970's. We all agree that he was a terrible human being. Now, based on the logic and careful examination of the facts by all pro-athletes, BLM, media, politicians and apparently everyone under the age of 30, police officers are all racists. In Toronto they also have no training on how to deal with emotionally disturbed individuals and even ...

I am a white man and perhaps that makes me privileged although in all honesty I do not even know how to gauge that. Regardless, this blog is not about me but it is about the entire human race.  A question that I have had since the beginning (this time around) of the Black Lives Matter protests and violence and in some places, false narrative concerning our police in Toronto, is what people actually think the solution is. If people really think racism is going to go away because of classroom time or training for our cops, we are truly living in a dream world. In the Old Testament, the actual problem comes to light for anyone willing to admit it. Jeremiah 17:9 says,   “The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? Racism and bigotry is not just a policing problem in the US and beyond. It is an issue all over the world and has always been. This is in no way an attempt to downplay the pain being felt in the Black ...