Hey Chaplain: The Police Wellness Podcast
The Hey Chaplain podcast is where cops encourage each other by sharing their wisdom and experience with the Chaplain. On Hey Chaplain you'll hear from dispatchers and federal agents, Sheriffs and US Marshals, as well as local detectives and patrolmen. From the LAPD to Scotland Yard, the guests on Hey Chaplain deliver advice and insights so that police officers everywhere can survive and thrive. The host, Jared Altic, has almost 30 years of experience serving and counseling military and law enforcement families. The show looks at both the humorous and traumatic sides of police life, sharing wisdom to create healthy cops both at work and at home. New podcast episodes about police life and chaplaincy are available on first, third, and fifth Mondays of each month. Look for occasional special bonus episodes! Share this podcast with a cop or someone who loves a cop.
Episodes
How do you know when to call it quits, especially if you're in the first half of your career? It's incredibly difficult to give blanket advice because everyone and everyone's circumstances are unique and constantly changing. For some officers, the best advice is wait a moment for the storm to pass. For other officers it's time or maybe past time to get out.
Today we're talking ...
This is Part 2 of our interview with Dennis Kleyh, Jr. Part 1 was about defensive tactics and the differences in mindsets between veterans and the police recruits who have never been punched in the face. But in putting that episode together, I was left with an equal portion of the interview where Dennis talked about his careers in the Marine Corps and law enforcement. Military careers and law enforcement...
How would a defensive tactics class in the police academy be different for a combat veteran than for someone without that experience? Today's guest Dennis Kleyh. Sgt Major Kleyh spent 30 years with the Marine Corps and is now a police captain, with over twenty years of teaching defensive tactics in both settings. Today we talk about how the combat mindset is different than policing and why some people...
This quarterly update episode looks at the Chaplaincy resolution from the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP). Police Chief Jim Sutterby is our special guest host today.
Jim was previously featured on episodes 003, 007, and 041.
The IACP site that lists this resolution is https://www.theiacp.org/resolutions
Music is by Chris Haugen
Hey Chaplain Update Episode 1Q 2026
Tags:
IACP, ...
We can't control everything in police culture and we certainly can't control how outsiders talk about police, but we can control our attitudes and our end of the relationships within the department. Today's guest is Eric Tung, a police commander and the host of the podcast Blue Grit Radio. Eric wants to talk about the empathy or lack thereof that exists between officers and between the off...
This is a special bonus episode I'm calling the Pursuit Channel; here you can listen in to the excerpts of Hey Chaplain interviews that get cut for time or strayed off topic but are still worth a listen. In this episode I also talk about where I'll be IRL this year.
Music is by Chris Haugen
Hey Chaplain Bonus Episode 48
Tags:
Police, Addiction, Chaplains, Conferences, Podcasting, Purpose, S...
What happens when the cop who was taking down bad guys and drug addicts, becomes a drug addict… for years… ruining everything and costing everything? Today we're talking to Brock Bevell, a medically retired cop who lost everything to opioid addiction. We're going to talk about the injuries, the pain, the addiction, the cost, and Brock's recovery. If you think that your addiction is going...
Today we return to police officer JD Pettey to talk about what happens when an officer starts talking during someone else's tragedy and how badly that can go. JD's family has had a number of serious tragedies and he was gracious enough to share those difficult memories with us because each story is an example of cops saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, even when they knew they were talking...
Today we're talking about Crisis Intervention Teams and the work they do to free up police resources for other jobs. Our guest today is a CIT officer and instructor I met at a training I went to this last year. His name is JD Pettey and he's a thirty year officer with about a decade specifically working with co-responders (the community behavioral health liaisons) to help people in need because...
In the first part of our conversation with Travis Yates, we talked about cowardly leadership. If you didn't listen to that episode, go back and listen to it right now, it's episode 131. This is the second part of that conversation where we veered off from the cowardly leadership conversation to the more specific conversation of how leadership affects officer safety. And this is something that ...
Following the law should be straightforward and black and white. Following department policy should be the same way. But navigating the murky waters of how to lead and inspire people to do their best work in a competitive and demoralizing environment… well, that's going to take some courage. Our guest today is Travis Yates, who rose up through the police ranks, saw a lot of good and bad leadership,...
A special guest host interviews Chaplain Altic to recap the year! Police Major Joe Grasela joins Jared to give us a recap of their favorite moments from the 2025 Hey Chaplain episodes. Listen in to find out what were the most noteworthy episodes of the year; also included are the top ten listener countries and cities. And don't miss a sneak peek of what's coming in 2026 and beyond!
Episodes...
This is our Christmas Bonus Episode for 2025! Today's guest is police chaplain Mark Femmel from St Louis. We're talking about the goodness of police officers, ride alongs, Christmas services at church, and Mark has a special Christmas message for you.
Music is by Audionautix and by Kevin MacLeod
Hey Chaplain Bonus Episode 47
Tags:
Christmas, Chaplains, Church, Holidays, Ministers, Morale, ...
When we talk about traumatic experiences, we usually go straight to the shootings and the car accidents, the grisly murders and crimes against children. What often gets left out of that list is getting the threatening lawyer letter that says you're getting sued and whole life is about to be destroyed. Today's guest is police chaplain Mark Clements who has received these letters over and over an...
It's mailbag time!
Use the link above to leave a comment or a question and we might use it on a future show!
Music is by Chris Haugen
Hey Chaplain Update Episode 4Q 2025
Tags:
Chaplaincy, Chaplains, Email, Law Enforcement, Mail, Podcasting, Radio, Chicago, Kansas City, Illinois, Kansas
Thanks for Listening! And, as always, pray for peace in our city.
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Today we are talking about Critical Incident Debriefs. I had an officer walk into a debrief one time, take one look at the chairs, and say, "this is a circle meeting?! I hate circle meetings!" Well, typically a modern, well-run debrief will prove its value by the end of the meeting, even reaching most of the skeptics… as long as they go to the meeting in the first place.
So our guest today is M...
Today we return to our conversation with Sheriff Sonny Byerley and his wife Mikaela. This is part two, so you if you haven't heard part one, you definitely need to go back and catch Episode 127 and hear some of the wild stories of Sonny's career: getting shot and stabbed, going through a dramatic officer involved shooting and witnessing the hatred and violence of a big city riot. But in this pa...
Today we're talking to Sheriff Sonny Byerley and his wife Mikaela. I met Sonny and Mikaela because they have begun traveling to police wellness conferences to share their experiences about PTSD. Sonny is a cop's cop: strong, independent, and self-reliant, but he's also a cop who has survived being shot and stabbed on multiple occasions and has endured all kinds of other traumas that a lot ...
In the summer of 2025, one of my patrol officers, Hunter Simoncic, was struck by a car and killed in the line of duty. As part of the grieving process, we are sharing our experiences with you that you might be better prepared for the impossible tasks that immediately follow a line of duty death.
One of the most difficult is that of family liaison officer. A family liaison is assigned to the family of a fal...
In the summer of 2025 my hometown of Kansas City, Kansas, lost two officers murdered in the line of duty: Deputy Elijah Ming and Officer Hunter Simoncic. Because they were killed just 30 days apart, we had two large, complex, line of duty death funerals at the local major league soccer stadium, one funeral just a few weeks after the other. We are still grieving and trying to process these losses, and as ...
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