What did you become first, an officer or a priest?

I have been a police officer for nearly 30 years. I experienced a calling to Ministry around the 20 year mark. Although I am sure the seeds had been sown much earlier.

Are there any similarities between the two roles?

I often get a surprised look when I say what my roles are. At first glance the two roles seem to be poles apart. And yet my experience has shown me, what I have always felt deep down, that there is much that make the two roles complement each other.

I have always had a sense of vocation to service, which I have been able to achieve through my police work. In that regard it does not seem to be a huge jump at all to continue that sense of vocation of service into Ministry life. I come from a generation of police officers who joined when there was still talk in the station about police being as much a vocation as well as a ‘job’.

Both areas of work involve dealing with people, and more specifically people’s lives. Often people come to us in both roles having experienced a trauma, with a sense of hurt, or even feeling broken – they’ve been burgled, assaulted, experienced a bereavement, having been told they are terminally ill.

In either role we would never expect to ‘fix’ everything, but we would find ourselves ‘walking alongside’ someone as they travel this stage in their life’s path. For a time people have a need to let us into their lives, and share the journey their experience is taking them on.

When I was at the Police College my trainers – who were very old school – told the class ‘You are paid to be nosey’. And that is very true. It never fails to surprise me what people are willing to share with you about their personal life, both as a police officer and a Priest. In both roles I have found myself asking about people’s lives in a way I would never be able to do outside of those roles. I don’t think in either role we should ever underestimate the huge privilege we are given when people open their lives to us.

Is it ever useful to apply your knowledge and status as a priest to your police work?

Having been a police officer for many years before becoming a Priest I have learned to carry any ‘authority’ carefully. Safeguarding of the vulnerable is at the forefront of all police work now, and is rapidly becoming so within the Church. I see it as a vitally important area where my experience of policing has and will support my work as a Priest in getting it right. If a person cannot turn to a police officer or a priest in all confidence when they are at their most vulnerable, then to whom can they turn?

Going back to my earlier point about having the privilege of being let into people’s lives when they are at their most vulnerable, both roles require trust if the two roles are to be performed successfully. I think it is fair to say the reputations of both vocations have taken a hammering in that regard. I’d like to think I have and will play my part to bring back that trust.

One of the obvious cross overs between the roles is having the ability to ‘read a person’. Nowadays in the police there is much talk of ‘emotional intelligence’ which is in effect being able to read someone and having some compassion for them. Priests have been practicing this for centuries!

Someone once said that a Priest and a police officer can spot a liar a mile away. I don’t think that is any secret training we get, but it is having an almost instinctive sense of reading people, although you learn a lot about people’s behaviour along the way. So I think there is quite a bit of cross pollination between the roles.

What do your colleagues in the force think about the fact you are also a priest?

I am always amused when I am in my ‘dog collar’ that someone will come up to me and say ‘Can I ask you a question?’, and I think ‘Ah, someone who wants to ask me about a point of theology’. Only to find they want to talk about a police matter. And when I am in my police uniform someone says ‘Can I ask you your professional opinion?’ and I think someone wants to plumb the depths of my policing knowledge only to find they want to pick my brains about whether getting their child baptised will help them get their child into a Church school!

I have never experienced any animosity towards me over either role. But then I don’t go round the station carrying a Bible. I know people are embarrassed to talk about their faith – and that includes church congregations. However, being a Priest in a work place seems to legitimise conversations in the workplace about faith. In that when people learn that I am a Priest it gives them a safe place to raise those questions they have about Faith that they would otherwise not be able to ask.

I have never looked to go around converting people, but I have become more convinced that there are many people who have a sense that there is a greater power outside of our understanding although they may be reticent to call that power ‘God’. I’ve discussed issues ranging from the existence of the Devil with senior officers as well as the merits of fasting with a Muslim colleague.

We have a Prayer room at our station and one of the most moving things I have experienced is being in there for a Midday Prayer and sharing the same space with a Muslim colleague – sometimes my own staff – as they also come to pray.

There have been sometimes when the roles have crossed over. I remember standing in for a colleague in a neighbouring Parish to do a wedding only to find one of the bridesmaids, and brother of the Groom was a fellow Inspector. Or the time I turned up at church to Preach and found half a police shift had turned up to support a colleague as they got their child Baptised. It’s always taken in good part.