Hey Chaplain: The Police Wellness Podcast

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This is a special bonus episode of Hey Chaplain and we're giving you a replay of Episode 319 of the Blue Grit Radio podcast by Eric Tung.  In this episode Eric interviews chaplains Jared Altic and Matt Domyancic about police wellness and various chaplain related topics, including some of the problems helpers have when engaging police culture and what a chaplain's chief motivation needs to be.

M...

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Imagine that someone with a knife or another deadly weapon is charging at you with intent to kill.  How close do they have to be for you to deploy deadly force?  Did you say 21 feet?  That's what I've always been told.  But what if you take that shot and now you're on trial for murder and the prosecutor has evidence that says the assailant was twenty-two feet away when you took ...

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Today we're coming back to our interview with identical twin first responders Stuart and Steve Littlefield.  Stuart is thirty-year cop, on the SWAT team and also a homicide detective; Steve is the thirty year firefighter.  Both worked at the same time in the same city, my home of KCK.  Today we're going to to talk about a couple of dramatic critical incidents they were involved in an...

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Identical twins but one's a firefighter and the other one is a cop and both have 30 year careers in the same city.  That's not a bad premise for a tv show… but it's also the background of the two guests we have on today's show.  Returning guest and friend of the show, retired detective Stuart Littlefield, has brought his brother, retired firefighter Steve Littlefield, to talk about...

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START HERE:  Welcome to the sixth year of Hey Chaplain, the police wellness podcast.

https://buymeacoffee.com/heychaplain

Music is by Wes Hutchinson and by Chris Haugen

Hey Chaplain Episode 000.6

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This episode marks our fifth anniversary where we go back and do follow ups and business checks, checking in on some of our past guests to get updates.  This year I built the episode around an interview I recently had with Steve Keogh, the retired Scotland Yard murder detective who was on the show a few years ago. We also hear a behind-the-scenes canine for Brotherhood for the Fallen.

Links and...

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When a cop tries to go to counseling, the counselor typically gets one chance to make a good impression.  Either this is going to go fairly well and the cop will come back again or it won't go well and the cop will swear he'll never go to another counselor the rest of his life!  A growing number of second-career, cops-turned-counselors are determined to make a meaningful connection on tha...

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When I was at the line of duty death funeral of Deputy Elijah Ming, I met officers from all across the midwest, but I also ran into uniformed officers from further away, specifically one officer who traveled all the way from New York City.  This was my introduction to Brotherhood for the Fallen, an organization of police officers who send representatives to every funeral of an officer murdered...

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Some of the funniest people I know are cops.  Comedy is a coping mechanism and humor, even dark humor, helps us regain control over uncontrollable circumstances.  So today I want to introduce you to a cop turned comedian, Jim Perry.  Jim was an officer near Chicago for several years before a medical retirement and now he's a comedian and comedy club owner in Arizona.  We're goin...

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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 lead...

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Our guest today is Phil Reeves; Phil has been an actor in Los Angeles for decades but he has also been a police officer and is now a law enforcement chaplain and a vocal advocate for first responder chaplaincy.  This first part, I'm just going to introduce you to Phil and let him tell you how he went from Hollywood movie sets to law enforcement.  In part two, we'll talk about the hard par...

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This is part two of my recent conversation with Jake the International Security Specialist Guy and if you haven't already listened to Ep 138 or when Jake was on the show last year in Ep 117, then stop what you're doing and go back and catch those episodes.  In this portion we are talking more about contingency planning with your family.  The specific context is what do you do if you're se...

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Today, back by popular demand, is Jake the International Security Specialist Guy. This time I'm catching  up to him while he was at home in Thailand.  Jake has been doing security work in trouble spots all over the world and was gracious enough to drop in a let me pick his brain on several topics.  In this episode we're going to talk traveling in a country with civil unrest, demonstr...

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Police Social Workers are not a new concept but until now there's not been a nationwide standard for how they are trained or how they are employed alongside police officers.  Caroline Ban teaches at Valparaiso University and she has started the first public safety social work certificate program in the nation for people who have their masters in social work or are getting their MSW.  Caro...

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This is a special bonus episode of Hey Chaplain recorded on site in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) Officer Safety and Wellness Conference.  Chaplain Phil Reeves from the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department was my partner in giving a presentation on embedding chaplains.  We recorded that talk and the Q&A that followed and I want to give...

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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 talki...

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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 a...

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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 peo...

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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

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