Cops, Criminals, and Christ
"Cops, Criminals & Christ" is a podcast delving into the intertwining worlds of law enforcement, crime, and faith. With Dale Sutherland, a former narcotics Sergeant turned pastor, it features gripping narratives and candid interviews exploring behind-the-scenes work of life undercover, as well as the transformative power of faith in the lives of both cops and criminals. Tune in for compelling insights and real-life stories that challenge, inspire, and reveal God’s grace available through it all, at the hands of its host and Dale’s daughter, Kristen Crew.
Cops, Criminals, and Christ
Finding God's Love in the Darkest Places: A Police Officer's Journey from Addiction to Redemption
What happens when the person meant to uphold the law finds themselves on the wrong side of it? In this raw and powerful episode, we meet a former police officer whose dream career spiraled into alcoholism, culminating in his own arrest for DUI.
The journey begins with his childhood dream of becoming a police officer—a dream he achieved at age 20. But beneath the badge lurked a growing addiction that would eventually cost him everything. Despite interventions from colleagues and supervisors, his drinking escalated to dangerous levels. Even after his arrest and the humiliation of being handcuffed by fellow officers, he continued drinking, seemingly unable to break free from alcohol's grip.
The turning point wasn't what you might expect. It wasn't jail time or losing his job that finally broke through—it was a profound realization about identity. Standing in a liquor store with bottle in hand, he experienced what he describes as a spiritual awakening: he wasn't just trying to be a "good Christian," he was a son of God. This shift from performance-based religion to relationship fundamentally changed his perspective, though recovery would still take time.
Perhaps the most powerful moment came when, once again unconscious in his car, he was discovered not by police but by family members. Their difficult but genuine forgiveness provided a tangible experience of grace that proved transformative. Six years sober now, he serves in ministry to families experiencing trauma—from childhood cancer to abuse situations—bringing the same compassion and understanding that saved him.
Whether you're struggling with addiction, know someone who is, or simply appreciate stories of profound transformation, this episode offers hope that no matter how far you've fallen, redemption remains possible. Listen now to discover how rock bottom became the foundation for a completely transformed life.
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Welcome to the Cops, criminals and Christ podcast, where we will hear interesting stories and unique perspectives about the work of cops, the world of criminals and how faith plays a role in the lives of both. Dale Sutherland was an undercover cop and a pastor for many years and will share interesting stories and perspectives and interview guests. I'm your host, his daughter Kristen Kru. Come join us to learn more about these powerful forces and how they shape the lives of people just like you. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2:So listen. Today we've got on the podcast a guy who grew up as a Christian ended up a drunk, ended up getting arrested and yet he was a policeman and Christ totally changed life. Now he's a minister. Can you believe it? You got to come and hear this story today. What was your lowest point where you knew things couldn't continue the way they were?
Speaker 3:When I woke up in my car didn't know where I was and I hear a knock on the window and it was a surprise to see who it was.
Speaker 2:That was the end of a long road. Yeah, so tell me, tell us you grew up. How, where'd you grow up?
Speaker 3:I grew up here in Northern Virginia. I was actually born at Fairfax Hospital, which is oh, really, I didn't know that yeah. It's so cool that I get to serve there now.
Speaker 3:Yeah Hospital which is, oh really, I didn't know that. Yeah, it's so cool that I get to serve there now. Yeah, but I grew up here in this area. I grew up in church. My family was Christian, so I was Christian. I'd like to say that I was a secondhand Christian, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's because I went to church, because my family went to church, sure, but I never kind of really developed that one-on-one relationship with him.
Speaker 2:You'd been around church, around Christians, your whole life. And when you got out, what did you want to do with your life? What did you think you wanted to do when you got out of high school or whatever?
Speaker 3:My dream was to be in law enforcement, was to be, a police officer and when I was 20, I got hired. I had to wait a little bit to go through the academy to turn 21.
Speaker 2:What police department?
Speaker 3:With Prince William, prince William County Police.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a county that's a few, maybe a half hour from DC and it's a real mix. You enjoyed it. You liked being in the police.
Speaker 3:I loved it. It was my dream come true. It was something that I wanted to do, since I was a kid, um, and you were a policeman. How long?
Speaker 2:uh, for about a little over three years a little over three years, so you're going along your police career. Grew up in a christian home. What are we doing a podcast about?
Speaker 3:I mean, there's this sounds like a nice little life.
Speaker 2:What's what's the deal? What ended your police career? Why'd you stop If you loved it so much? What?
Speaker 3:happened Myself. Yeah, yeah, I thought I had built a pretty good life for myself, but I realized that it wasn't.
Speaker 2:Why? What happened that you had to leave the police department?
Speaker 3:I guess backtracking a little bit just to give a little bit of the back story. I grew up in church, right, but when I was like 16, 17, something happened with the pastor and my family and stuff and it kind of pushed me away from that For my mistake. I was looking at man, I wasn't looking at God, and I thought that the pastor was like the closest thing to God. I thought he was our kind of represent representative of of who God was. And when I kind of saw how he uh had been acting towards my family and I during a really, really difficult time in our lives, I was like, if this is how God is, this is not what I want to be a part of.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And uh. So when I was 20 years old, like I said, I applied, got hired, was in police work, but I started ever since I was 18, I moved out and kind of living on my own terms.
Speaker 2:Can you say that like social drinking, partying, that kind of stuff?
Speaker 3:Yeah it started out that way anyway, but then it really became uh an addiction.
Speaker 2:It became a problem for me even before you joined the police department or more after uh well, once I turned 21 was when I could drink uh legally whatever I would drink before that you know that I could access it at all times. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But once I was 21, which was right when I was becoming a police officer, I started to drink more often, more often. It became more than just a social thing, or on the weekends or whatever, and it became a daily thing.
Speaker 2:You were drinking daily while being the police.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And were you drinking on duty?
Speaker 3:Uh, not on duty, no, but there were, when I was a policeman in DC there's lots of drinking on duty as well as off duty Not me, but the other guys I worked with wasn't unusual.
Speaker 2:So the so for you. You had the uh, you started drinking and it increased more and more. So and it increased more and more.
Speaker 3:So what was?
Speaker 2:your favorite drink. What did you drink? The?
Speaker 3:most Anything, really. I mean I stayed away from beer but liquor rum, vodka, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so you're drinking like this. You're going out, you're getting farther from God too, or are you still interested spiritually?
Speaker 3:I had zero interest spiritually. I thought God wanted nothing to do with me and god wanted nothing to do with me and I wanted nothing to do with him. And that was our you know relationship, if you want to call it that yeah.
Speaker 2:So you kept drinking and you ended up. Did you ever get in trouble at the police department? Did you ever get? Did anybody ever find out? Did the two you know mess up each other?
Speaker 3:yes, um, so, prior to any legal trouble happening, um, a couple people that I worked with uh, talked to the higher-ups like they saw the the problem that I had and they tried to do like counseling and whatever for me and stuff, but I just couldn't care so they sent you some guys, snitched on you yeah, yeah, yeah and.
Speaker 2:And then you got in trouble with the bosses and they got you some counseling and said hey, man, you got to stop drinking. Yeah, did you stop drinking? Did you listen to the bosses?
Speaker 3:Not at all, not at all. I remember we actually went on a trip to a IACP conference in.
Speaker 2:Philly, it's International Association of Chiefs of Police. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And they took me with them and stuff. And you know we went partying and stuff like that too.
Speaker 2:So it was like you know, I don't know the bosses were there and they were drinking like you were drinking exactly, yeah, so it wasn't so compelling of a message, right yeah and I'll never forget one uh captain, who, who me?
Speaker 3:he was like you. Got a badge in your pocket, so who's going to stop you? Just keep going. That was kind of the mentality or the mindset or whatever, until I did get stopped, until I did get in trouble. I was a police officer and I got arrested for DUI.
Speaker 2:Wait a second now, just police-wise, we don't do that kind of thing. We try not to arrest uh other police officers yeah and uh, certainly for major offenses, yes, but for drinking and driving or other things like that, I don't think you'll find a policeman that would normally arrest, unless, uh, they get back in their car. Generally we try to get them out of the car and send them home, take them home, even whatever.
Speaker 2:How did this happen? Why did you end up getting locked up? Did you take a swing at the officer or something, or what did you do?
Speaker 3:I was asleep in my car, oh okay, and I was in a parking lot and I hear a knock on my window and I wake up. I see who it is and he asked me to step out of the car like normal and I I thought the same thing. I was like he's not gonna do anything or whatever.
Speaker 2:you know call me a taxi, state police or or county local.
Speaker 3:Yeah, did you know the guy I didn't know him, you know, um, it was outside of my jurisdiction. Yeah, so he's putting me through the test and I'm starting to realize, like, is he really trying to do this to me, or whatever? At that point, you know, they asked you to blow and I refused, so he arrested me. That was it. Yeah, yep, so in Virginia, in fairness.
Speaker 2:You have this what do you call it.
Speaker 1:The BAC.
Speaker 2:Breathless.
Speaker 3:BAC yeah.
Speaker 2:So you, you breathe into it. You just had to blow there, but you were going to blow the station at the whole. Okay, so if you refuse, you lose your lights for six months and you have to get arrested, correct?
Speaker 3:Correct.
Speaker 2:Um, so that was your scenario. You figured because the rule is a lot of guys say it's better to not do that because you get um, otherwise it gets. The number of the blood alcohol content is the concern. If it's too high, right, that's the idea. Okay, so that's what you mean when you say didn't blow right, so you did. You didn't do that and you knew, boom, that's it. He had no option at that point.
Speaker 2:He's got to lock you up, or right um, so okay, so he locked you up so can you tell him you're the police? Yeah, yeah and what did he say?
Speaker 3:you remember that, give me the scolding of like you know. Yeah, you should know better, exactly, and he's right, he should know better.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:We don't want policemen out drinking and driving. That's right. That's a bad idea. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So you get arrested and you end up going to the station. What jurisdiction you get arrested in?
Speaker 3:In Alexandria, in Alexandria, yeah.
Speaker 2:So what does it feel like when you're in handcuffs now and you're over at the police station?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was surreal being on the other side of it. You know I'd been in handcuffs a thousand times in the academy for practice and everything like that, but this time it was real, you know, and I remember them taking my picture and going into the to the cell or whatever and thinking like man, how did I get here? But you know, not even that was my rock bottom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that had to be your lowest point to a great degree, at least to that point in your life. I mean, you're there locked up and you guys have to picture this in the where he would have gone into would have been a bunch of different criminals sitting there, a bunch of guys locked up. One could be locked up for murder, one could be locked up for spitting on the sidewalk, but everybody's locked up there. Was it a night, I mean late at night, so you got drunks and people hollering and all that, and you're used to controlling that crowd right now you're one of the crowd now I'm one of the crowd exactly yeah, and then putting a cell too, yeah and then did you get any
Speaker 2:preferential treatment.
Speaker 3:When you got there, anybody say hey, come on man, he's a police. Let's, let's take him not no, vip, no no I was just yeah and uh guy okay, I had to wait till morning and they called my supervisor.
Speaker 2:Wow, my supervisor came in. They made you wait till morning too. Yeah, wow.
Speaker 3:My supervisor came and picked me up and that was a ride I'll never forget. Yeah, a lot of silence, but a lot of— when I was a sergeant, I've gone to a few police stations to pick up officers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's unpleasant, yeah it's unpleasant. Yeah, unpleasant for them. So that feels like you're now on your way back. You're riding with the sergeant in the car. Does it hit you that this show might be over, that you might lose your job?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that was my mindset at that time. But just to be honest with you, later that night I was out doing the same thing again.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The same night, yep, after getting locked up and being out of jail, and how much you drinking in a day?
Speaker 3:Ivan, what are you drinking Too much? Yeah, it was. Every day was a just to drink to get blacked out?
Speaker 2:I mean, it wasn't like Really All the way to blacked out.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you weren't happy, that was just a everyday thing for me. Jeez, yeah, that's a lot. So anyway, I went and picked up my car from the, from the tow lot, and went and bought a bottle and went out and doing it again. I just I was that lost, I didn't care. Were you worried about losing your job? I was to an extent, but I just I can't explain it to you I just didn't care didn't think yeah, okay, so now you're that lasts how long?
Speaker 2:six months or something, before they actually fire you, or how long?
Speaker 3:yeah, uh, they kept me on for a little while. Uh, like you know, they took uh my badge and everything like that. So I was just working doing paperwork and stuff like that, but uh, embarrassing yeah, yeah, very embarrassing very embarrassing, um, but you know, even throughout all that time, uh, like I said, I just kept doing it. You know, I I got one dui, but I really should have got a thousand of them really yeah, because you kept driving too yeah, oh no really
Speaker 2:yeah yeah, even knowing that second and third you, you actually go to jail.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that didn't stop you.
Speaker 3:It didn't stop me, so jail didn't stop you.
Speaker 2:All your parents' disappointment didn't stop you Losing your job, didn't stop you. What's going on? Why are you sitting here different today? Why did you stop drinking?
Speaker 3:The real answer to that? The only answer, is God. During that time, I had obviously ruined a lot of relationships in my life. I was even engaged at that time to get married and that ended. I ruined a lot of relationships with my family, my parents, my brothers, sister.
Speaker 2:It was not a good time. Everybody was trying to help you. Everybody was trying to get you to stop.
Speaker 3:But I just rejected the help. I didn't want the help. Like I said from the beginning, that's what I thought my relationship with God was like. Was that you know, you hate me, I hate you, and that's about it. Until one day I can't really explain it. I just felt it. I guess, if you want to call it that, that he loved me, that I was his son, and that started to change so much of the way that I saw him and I saw myself.
Speaker 2:So, no wait, did you? What changed your life? Had you gotten married at this point? Were you starting a new job, or was this right after the police department? Or how long after you left? And you, you know.
Speaker 3:Just a little while after the conviction, which took a couple months to go through court, and even that was a process, going to court and even seeing people that I knew and just being on that side of the fence and everything like that. But a little bit after was when things started to change. I wish I could tell you that it was like an immediate one and done thing, but it was just a gradual process of me realizing God's love. For me it was two years afterwards was when I got married. You know it started out great and stuff. But then you know, here and there I'd have, I'd mess up, I'd start drinking again. You know I had stopped it for the most part and I'll never forget that when you're drinking, you're living the crazy life with it.
Speaker 3:You're in the bars.
Speaker 2:You're not just sitting in a corner drinking out of a paper bag. You're out, partying and living the life. Right, but you're married and you shouldn't be living. You should be home with your wife, not out in the bars and all that stuff.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, and there was one day I'll never forget I was at the ABC store and I had the bottle in my hand waiting in line to pay and I just got that. I don't know what you want to call it, but that feeling that you're a son and it really it kind of like changed my mindset of like. Is this how a son acts? Is this what a son does? Are these the decisions that a son makes? You know, my whole life I had tried to be a or, growing up anyway, tried to be like a good Christian and I thought that, you know, it was almost like a high score game.
Speaker 3:Like the better that you do, the higher you are up on this totem pole and at the top is the pastor and God hears him. But to the rest of us it's like you know. But then I realized what I had already known is that I don't get to God. As God came to me. You know he sent Jesus to us to know that it was more than just I'm, more than just a Christian.
Speaker 3:I'm a son, and I don't know if that makes any sense to anybody, son, and I don't know if that makes any sense to anybody, but to me it just. It makes things clear or clearer in my head of I'm not a good or bad Christian, I'm a son, and the more that I can accept who my father is and who I am, it'll just kind of like take care of itself type of thing. It's not so much of me striving to get to Him, it's realizing that he came to me and the implications of what that means. So that he came to me. You know, one of our verses that we use all the time is Romans 5.8, is that even while we were yet still sinners, god demonstrated His love for us.
Speaker 2:So Jesus came to you while you had a messed up life messed up career, messed up family life in terms of what you're doing, messed up social circle. You'd lost all your police friends.
Speaker 3:I know pretty fast, right, yeah, immediately. They're like you're not one of us anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's right, it's like flipping a switch man, it is Like, immediately it is. You might keep one you might keep, one that will take your calls.
Speaker 3:The rest of them.
Speaker 2:They're ready to roll right, yep, so you've got all that, and the thing that hits you is while buying a bottle of liquor is it's like you hear the Lord say you're my son. You're a son of God. Is what you're really saying right. And that's the thing that breaks the cycle or starts to break the cycle.
Speaker 3:It definitely started to break the cycle. Yeah, now let's be clear.
Speaker 2:Did it happen? That moment, the thing you dropped the bottle walked out of there. Never again.
Speaker 3:I did put the bottle back and I walked out and I'd like to say that I never took a drink again, but that's not the case. But it was definitely the turning point, the uh, what started to to change my mind.
Speaker 2:you know it's a confusion a lot of people have about stopping stuff in our lives is that it's going to stop. You know, we'll hear those stories where a guy says, yeah, this happened, I'm done right. But if you look at it, most of the things in life we repeat I mean we all are angry, we gossip, we think the wrong thoughts, so on.
Speaker 2:Those are some of the things, and so what you're doing is is what I think the lord is doing with you, which was, uh, slowly, uh lowering it and then eventually eradicating it right, yeah, right, that's exactly right.
Speaker 1:So how much longer do?
Speaker 2:you think you were messing around drinking and and I'd say about another year or so, Another year where you'd have on and off.
Speaker 3:Right, right. And another time this happened to me, where I started drinking again and it just got out of control and I found myself in the same situation in my car, didn't know where I was, and I hear a knock on my window and immediately you know, I think, man, this is the police again I'm. You know this is all going to happen all over again, but it wasn't the police. I almost wish it was. Yeah, because who it was was my family. I expected, obviously, you know, know, the worst kind of response, the worst type of uh, rejection and yeah, everything like that you figured they were done yeah your wife was done with you.
Speaker 3:You figure at that moment, you know, and I'm not going to say there wasn't any hard times after that or uh, rightfully so anger and and whatnot but uh, uh, but there was forgiveness and it was kind of at that moment where I realized, man, I don't deserve this, I deserve the absolute worst. My actions, my decisions totally qualify me for not having any of this, but she forgave me. But she forgave me and it was kind of at that moment where I started to see really understanding God's forgiveness for us when it's something totally not deserved, it's not something that you earn. You know, john 3.16 doesn't say for the world so earned and deserved Jesus that God had to send him. It was that God so loved the world that he gave. And when I could kind of see, like that tangible experience of this is what forgiveness is. It's something that I don't absolutely deserve at all, but something that she decided to give to me or whatever, and accepting that was life-changing, it really was and life-changing.
Speaker 2:So your marriage gets restored slowly, yeah. Your drinking goes away slowly, yeah. Now, how long has it been now since you had a drink?
Speaker 3:Oh wow, a couple years, six years something like that yeah, and you've been married.
Speaker 2:How long?
Speaker 3:now Eight years.
Speaker 2:And you have a little girl.
Speaker 3:Yeah, how old she's? Four, four Yep.
Speaker 2:All these things come together Drink, it's gone. What? And now you're doing what. What are you doing for a job? What do you? What do you do? How are you spending your time?
Speaker 3:So I uh with you, yeah with uh the church, with boost others. Um, it's an amazing ministry reaching people at their lowest points and, uh, sharing the love of god with them, uh, being a light in that dark time. Uh, we, we serve families that are going through kids with cancer, kids who have been physically and sexually abused, and even parents that have a history of that and then finding out that happened now to their kids and stuff. So there's kind of generational trauma going on that we get to be a light in that dark time to them.
Speaker 2:Tell us story, give us one story. Somebody that you uh desperate situation, tell us what situation was. And in this job you get. It's almost like the police department.
Speaker 2:You get different calls every day yeah you get a crisis four crisis a day or two crisis a day or six crisis, whatever it is and you get those in because social workers at the hospitals and I'll send them to you, okay, so you get those. Then when get those, you'll go just like when you're a policeman you get a call and you respond to the call, right, right. So when you get there, what's the toughest one you've been on? What do you think has been the toughest call?
Speaker 3:Wow, there's been several. You know, I think the worst thing that could ever happen to you something happening to your kid um, I know, when my daughter was born, it's like people tell you but you don't really understand, uh, that love that you can have for a child, yeah, um, and and I relate that so much to how our father loves us as his kids. But you know, not too long ago we had a 13 month old and I was with the parents through that whole thing, through that whole process. Just yesterday I was with a mom who had been prostituted by her parents and then she just found out now that her 11-year-old had been abused sexually by a family member too and then became suicidal and everything A little 11-year-old.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, there's so many sad stories moms that find out that one child was abusing another child.
Speaker 2:In these cases, you're getting, you're getting from the social workers and you're filling a physical need.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:But you're also able in most cases not always, but in most cases to also fill spiritual need yeah and and what's the message? What's similarity between you? At your lowest point, you know that car, when the knock on the door, knock on the window, or this mom that just found out this horrible thing, that's horrible truth. What's, what's the similarity there?
Speaker 3:you know, there's a verse in there's a couple verses that god is close to the brokenhearted, and one in Romans that says it's the goodness of God that leads to repentance. In my case it was that it was seeing the goodness of God through my family and through him that really changed my way of thinking, that really changed me. The Bible says a man thinks in his heart. So is he so? Once I started changing the way I thought it started to show in the way that I was. But with these families it's a little bit different. It's something that happened to them, it's a sickness, it's an abuse or something like that.
Speaker 3:But I think the truth still remains that a lot of times you know you want to blame God for these things, or God, why did you do this to my family? Or why did you? You know? But Jesus said in John 10, 10, that the enemy came to steal, kill and destroy, but I came that you may have life and have it more abundantly. And even in these situations, in the Psalms it says that even in the valley of the shadow of death he's with us and starting to see little by little, even in those dark times, just some of the light of God's goodness. Even in those situations, even in the storms, he's still with us and that there's nothing that could ever separate us from His love, that he promises to be there with us throughout those situations.
Speaker 2:And you still feel confident about that. After all this torture people go through and all the stuff you've had happen in your own life, you still feel sure about that, that God's love is real.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the one verse that really, really, really changed my life and that gives me that surety is in John 17. It's Jesus' prayer right before he gets arrested to be crucified. It's not the prayer in Gethsemane, but it's right prior to that. And in verse 20, he's praying for his disciples. But then, in verse 20, he says I pray not for these alone, talking about those 12. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their words. So he's praying for believers, he's praying for people that will believe in him. And in verse 23,. Again, this is his prayer for us, because we believe in him. And I think it's so amazing that Jesus prayed for us, for me, for you, and he continues to do so. But even while he was here on earth, even in that time, that's what he was thinking about. It's just incredible to me.
Speaker 3:But, in verse 23,. He says I in them and you in me. So he's talking to God, the Father, saying he's in Him and he's in us, that they may be made perfect in one, that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. And that verse forever changed my life. To know that I grew up in church and I've never heard that verse ever, to know that Jesus himself said that God loves us as he loves him, was too good to be true. I didn't accept it at first. You know there's no way. I'm here and I got to work myself up to get to, you know. But whether I feel it or not, whether I, you know, whether circumstances or life tells me something different, I can be sure in what Jesus said.
Speaker 2:And you share that with the families now, that same idea that Christ really loved them.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:I think your conviction, your commitment that the Lord has given you by you going through all this trouble, has gotten you to a place that he could prepare you to be used more than ever. So you're a blessing. You're a blessing. It's a story of redemption. It's a story of what God can do with anyone. Absolutely, and how he can reach us, no matter where we are.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm definitely not. I didn't qualify myself to do any of this man join a crowd.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's great. God qualified you through his love and his mercy, absolutely.
