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
Deadly Force in the Bible and in Law Enforcement
We wrestle with deadly force from the street to Scripture, weighing policy shifts, gritty case stories, and the tension between justice and mercy. We look at how a holy God judges sin, why any of us still live, and what true accountability should require.
• defining deadly force beyond firearms
• shift from fleeing felon doctrine to imminent threat
• why “unarmed” does not always mean safe
• two DC cases and missing context in headlines
• human reactions after shootings and moral weight
• sin, holiness, and divine judgment in Scripture
• Korah’s rebellion and Acts 5 as warnings
• the cross as perfect justice and perfect mercy
• reframing the question toward grace and accountability
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We're back with the Cops, Criminals, and Christ podcast with an episode today that I'm a little nervous about. I want to hear what you have to say. Let's dive in. Tell us what we're talking about today.
SPEAKER_00:Deadly force. Deadly force is something from the first day you sign on as a policeman to the day you retire. You are very, it's very central in our training and in our minds every time we go out on the street. All that. Deadly force is central to this weird job I chose.
SPEAKER_01:Define it. What is deadly force?
SPEAKER_00:Deadly force is when you it's not anytime you use force, you grab a guy to handcuff, and that's not deadly. It would have to be that what I'm doing could result in the death of that individual. So we always think guns, but it doesn't have to be guns. We can hit guys with cars, we can cause deadly force that way. We can deadly force uh when we hit them with a slapjack, an instrument, you know. If it's a sick person or or high on drugs or something, you can kill them lots of ways. You know, we've killed guys with uh chokeholds and by wrestling around with them and then they end up dead. So there's lots of different things that can happen, and all of that is considered deadly force because it's force that we started that ended in death, or that we attempted to kill them with and that all sounds very no bueno, not good to me. Well, you know, it's really good because we need somebody in society who can stop evil that is deadly. So the only time deadly force is justified is when uh a life is in danger, another life is in danger, or our lives are in danger. That's the police kind of motto. Now, in the police department, DC police didn't used to be that way when I first started. We also had another, there's another option, and that is if a felon, if somebody who we believe is gonna cause bodily harm to another, who's at risk of causing more bodily harm to another, and they're running away, you can kill them. Now, so expect this. Think of it this way: a guy has a gun in his hand, he just killed somebody, he's running towards another person screaming, I'm gonna kill you. Even though it's his back to me, I can shoot and kill him. Because he's about to go hurt somebody else.
SPEAKER_01:And when you say you can, you mean you would not be penalized, charged, etc., if you did.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I can't tell you today what would happen. I mean, lots of people, the courts can do whatever they want to do, but I'm saying the law and what they've trained us was there were those exceptions. In our case, it was a little wider when I first started. But remember, there used to be all over the United States something called a fleeing felon law. I don't know if you ever heard about this. But let's say that any felony you commit, you steal a car, you break in a house, those are all felonies. You steal over a certain amount of money in a store, you that's a felony. You assault somebody with vigor, you know, you beat them real bad, and you're running away, we could shoot them and kill them. Fleeing felon law. It was all over the United States, and then it slowly over time started getting pulled back. And now I don't know anybody that's a fleeing felon law. Any felony. Yeah, so you could steal a car, and as you're running away from stealing a car, they could kill you. Cops could kill you because you're a fleeing felon.
SPEAKER_01:Now you say this is all good news, but I think you, as well as I know, there's something in the news that even that cops have done that even you don't agree with, that you're like, that is not good, that's not the best way, that's not the right way. Obviously, people listening to this could say, what in the world is everything wrong with cops because they are so powerful, you know, um, I don't want to say hungry, but like overuse their authority or the fact that this is a possibility in the hands of a cop that we know are so flawed is dangerous and scary, not good news. How would you respond to that?
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean, sure, uh, until you need him, you know. Listen, because there's bad guys out there, and there are bad guys in police work, and you know, everybody does this illustration, but cop doctors, nurses, we have these crazy stories of doctors and nurses that kill people, you know? And boy, policemen who do that should, you know, be treated as such. If they murder somebody, then murder is murder. Doesn't matter if you had a uniform on or not. But you on your street, I don't care how bad your criminal you are, you still would rather somebody kill somebody before they kill you or your child. Guaranteed. Guaranteed everybody agrees on that part when it comes to them, you know. But policy-wise, they might say, Oh, the cops shouldn't have guns. And then you say, Would you want him to have a gun when the guy is shooting at you? Would you want him to have a gun? Usually they'd say yes.
SPEAKER_01:So you're saying there's circumstances that are justifiable that everyone would potentially agree would be a good thing.
SPEAKER_00:And there's, you know, unique circumstances. Some would say much less circumstances, others would go a little wider. But either way, deadly force is a problem. Deadly force is a problem that is only exists because of sin and wickedness. It doesn't exist. Deadly force wouldn't have to exist in society if people would stop sinning stop sinning. You also wouldn't have policemen misbehave if they'd stopped sinning.
SPEAKER_01:In heaven, there will be no deadly force.
SPEAKER_00:No, there'll be no deadly force. No.
SPEAKER_01:Where do you see this in scripture? How do you reconcile this with who God is and what that means for us?
SPEAKER_00:Let me say this a little bit about humans at deadly force, just because I've been around a lot of it. So I worked in homicide a very short time, but I also was on the scene of several times when policemen killed somebody, or lots of times when bad guys killed each other. Lots of times, you know. And so anyway, I've seen policemen. Sometimes you you go up and they're they're throwing up, you know, because they're so upset over what they just did. Other times they're high fiving. Either human beings react differently to this. Sometimes the high-fiving, I've seen hugs. I've hugged a guy who just missed a shot, uh, just missed getting shot and then fired. And uh, and then you just naturally hug. Why? Because humans, when they survive something deadly and they survive, it's it can be afforded to feel like you made it, you know. The the reason is is because the, you know, I just think it's a normal human reaction. Uh, but on the other hand, there are guys that are desperately upset by this, and so much so that they never get right again. Guys drink, guys think, but that's just a lower percentage, I would say, of soldiers and of police and others who use deadly force, it is generally not loved or enjoyed, but it is something that they feel like they they were right in doing in some cases. But we have lots of cases we can talk about deadly force-wise.
SPEAKER_01:Well, what's one in your police career, as the people want to know? I'm sure that you were maybe like most glad deadly force was an option or that the most necessary use of deadly force in your career.
SPEAKER_00:There were lots of those. There was one I was thinking about. Now, this is a good story because the Washington Post wrote an article saying that the DC police killed two unarmed men, and and they didn't tell anything else in the story. Now, it's an interesting story, and it named the officers who killed the the unarmed men. Let me just tell you what happened. One case, uh, we had a jail inside the hospital. That's how bad our our little district was, that we had to have a prison inside the hospital. So we had bad guys in there, we'd take them over, guys would come over from the prison, from the jail, they'd hold them there and then take them over. Okay. So we had two policemen working in there. And uh one night, uh 4 or 5 a.m., a young female officer who was only about five feet tall. She's really small, she showed up, went back to the strong room, this jail thing. And what she sees is a guy who had beaten the uh policeman with he had taken his club and had beaten the policeman so bad, he's an older policeman. Uh he had beaten him unconscious, blood all over him. He turns and he charges her. Now he did not have a gun in his hand. He did not have a gun in his hand. She shot and killed him. But remember, she's five feet tall. She's uh has no defense at this point. She's stuck with this fella. He already is, to her idea, killed a policeman, and now he's running at her. He doesn't have a gun. So the pol so the post printed that and said they killed an unarmed man. Well, I guess, yes. Now let me give you another one. This is really easy.
SPEAKER_01:Did she get charged or was that justified?
SPEAKER_00:No, she she never got charged in court or anything, but got charged in a sense by the Washington Post. I wrote an editorial, which I still have, to the Washington Post about these two shootings, saying this is, you know, just just uh horrific uh uh lack of context, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Uh yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'll give you another one, a guy you know, Gigi Neal. He was a policeman's policeman. I mean, this guy, he man, he he had chances to shoot at people every day because we were in the street all the time. This guy was a hardworking policeman. Everybody in the city knew him, bad guys, good guys. Gigi Neal. Well, he goes through all of that. He recovered, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, this guy recovered hundreds of guns without firing a shot. Without firing a shot. All right? He's driving home one night in his cruiser, and a guy drives to carjack him. The guy is unarmed, but the guy is huge. He overpowers, he's by himself on his way. And the guy overpowers him, is beating Gigi to the point he doesn't know what else to do. He's going unconscious. He's now pushed back in his seat, back into his cruiser, his car, and this guy's just killing him. He's literally doesn't know what to do. He takes his gun out finally, you know, he's begging the guy to get off. He's fighting back, he's doing everything. He just didn't have anything else he could do, so he fired one shot into the guy. And uh then, by the way, his gun fell apart, which was frightening. And the guy didn't stop, by the way, after he got shot. A lot of times, after you shoot somebody, if they're high or it takes a minute for it to kill them. And in that case, the guy finally died right on top of Gigi. He was still fighting and fighting, fighting, and then he just passed and made away. The Washington Post Prince says, Gigi Neil shot an unarmed man. Well, wait a second now. Should he have, should he not? I don't know what else he could do in these cases in the these particular scenarios. But my point is, deadly force can always be examined and shouldn't be examined. And it was put before a grand jury and he wasn't indicted. But we have to remember that it's necessary at some times, and it's needed sometimes because people are sinful and they do crazy stuff.
SPEAKER_01:People are sinful and they do crazy stuff.
SPEAKER_00:That's it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Brains are really broken.
SPEAKER_00:That's that's right. That's right.
SPEAKER_01:It really goes deep, and yeah, it's not something that changes with a little jail sentence when they get back out, I fear.
SPEAKER_00:No, no.
SPEAKER_01:Pretty proven.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_01:Do you want to answer my question about the uh where in the Bible do you see this? How does this inform your view of God and his view of people and humanity and all of it?
SPEAKER_00:So I if I were to preach Christ to you, I would always tell you, one, he is a God who is holy and righteous. But two, he is a God who is merciful and loving. So this is the truth of the gospel, it is the good news of the gospel that you and I are sinners, absolutely, but that Christ has an answer, absolutely. But there are all these times in the scriptures where God uses deadly force. How can that possibly be?
SPEAKER_01:And I think that's a hard pill to swallow. Tell us.
SPEAKER_00:Tell us, yeah. Well, what do you think? I mean, you if you if you study this, I I'm kind of fascinated by this because it's hard for me to understand, too. So I'll give you one that's uh quite a story. It's in um Numbers um 16, I think. And uh Korah, the Bible is not right here, um, but Korah anyway rebels against uh Moses, and so Moses is leading the people through the promise on the way to the promised land, and Korah and a bunch of other leaders go against him, go against Moses, and rebel against not just him, but against the Lord as well. Long story short, worth reading the passage. But eventually God warns them, and then you know what he does? Opens up the earth and swallows all of them. They all die. Immediate, boom, right there, deadly force. I think 250 died then. So I have to say, what the heck? How the heck is that justified? I mean, is he I mean, we're talking about whether policemen should do it in here, 250 people were killed. So for me, I say, man, do I really understand the Bible? Do I understand God? So let me give you some thoughts that help me on this, on God's deadly force, let's say. And there's several of these. I think that one of the things to know is that, first of all, God is a um holy God, that he is right, he is right, and he is the only righteous one in the whole universe. Not Korah, not me, not anybody, just him. And all of us, when given the opportunity to live righteously and live for him, disobey and live our own way. So all of us are sinful. I just was with little Joy today, your little girl. And while I'm with her, she's just so cute and wonderful, but she also is disobedient naturally. Uh, she does things she shouldn't do, no matter what you do, and that's because she's a sinner. She's a little sinner, especially she isn't a sinner.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mean, gee, I think they're like I need to give my consent to diss my one-year-old. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Well, hey, this is the fact of life. You you got you got 25 kids. Any of them do you know that aren't sinners?
SPEAKER_01:She's made in God's image. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:And flawed by sin, perhaps. Sin nature, perhaps, but there hasn't been a lot of sinning yet, okay?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, she hasn't done much yet. She hasn't done much. So listen, so so here's number one thing you gotta know. All men are sinful. And and here's the bottom line. The bottom line is the Bible says the wages of sin is death. Now, by the way, as we talk to children, uh, when there's um no, they call like an age of accountability, and there's also the mental capacity to make decisions. Uh, if somebody loses their life before those two things have happened, uh, they go straight to heaven. I just want to make sure that's understood. Because sin comes really from a willful heart that is choosing unrighteousness. And I really use babies or kids because I don't have to teach them to lie, I have to teach them to tell the truth. You know what I mean? I don't have to teach a kid to lie, I never had to teach a kid to lie. You were a rotten kid when you were little and you used to do all kinds of terrible things. Naturally. So look, here's our here's what we're gonna learn. One, all men are sinful. Okay, so let's just accept that. Then we say, with that, the wages of sin is death. So if all men are sinful and all men are eligible for the death penalty, is it wrong for God Almighty to kill them, to apply the death penalty? If he does it at twenty-two or he does it at 102.
SPEAKER_01:And by death penalty, you just mean we're all gonna die.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And he can take your life when he wants to because all men are sinful, and we're we deserve it. So it's kind of like more like I deserve at any time to have my wife complain to me because I've not always been a perfect husband. She could say that, and I'd have to say, it's fair, I've not always been a perfect husband. See what I mean? I'm always guilty of that, no matter what. And so she's right. If she wants to bring that up, she's she's correct. But God is perfect. My wife isn't, she's darn close, though. But God is perfect, and he says, so that's the first one.
SPEAKER_01:Second one is so with that one, you're saying the posture of your heart, the posture of your life should be like, we all are headed towards death, we all deserve to die. It is by God's grace that He's He's not instilled that power here and now. We didn't bring ourselves into this world, we don't bring ourselves out of this world. God could do whatever he wants, and he's choosing to give you life today.
SPEAKER_00:That's exactly right. And and so 22,000 times a day you breathe. If God decides to stop that tomorrow, it's like a guy uh coming to knock on your door, he comes knocking on your door, you answer the door, he hands you a hundred dollars. You say, What's this for? Nothing. Just take the hundred dollars. He leaves, comes back the next day. He does that for 30 days, he knocks on the door, gives you$100. The 31st day he stops and he goes and gives your neighbor$100. You look out the window and you say, Where's my money? That's what it is to say, I deserve life forever. I deserve life, I deserve never to die, whether of cancer or of God's judgment, I never deserve to die. Where's my life, God? That's not true. He gives you 22,000 breaths a day. By the way, this doesn't resolve it. Can I give you my other reasons why?
SPEAKER_01:Yep, let's hear the number.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, number two, each person's judgment is fair and justified. Why? Because he's the perfect judge. The problem we have in our court system, and I've seen it as a policeman, is that juries get it wrong sometimes, and judges get it wrong, right? So that scares us when we have the death penalty on earth because human beings are making the decision. By the way, are you against the death penalty?
SPEAKER_01:I remember in what grade was I in that I had to do a persuasive speech, and you told me, I don't know, you didn't tell me, but I definitely remember your influence of being for the death penalty, and that wasn't very popular. It wasn't. I remember that. The teacher being surprised, the friends, maybe it was like sixth grade. I mean, I was young, where I hadn't really like formed my own thoughts. But I would say a lot of Christians now would say it's not up to us to take life from womb to tomb. It's not up to us to take life. So that would be one view of it. Are you still pro-death penalty?
SPEAKER_00:Sure. For the right case, for the right cases. The problem is we could talk about this a lot, and I think it's interesting, but the the the problem is in logically, it is fair for people to say, how can you say you can't take their life in the womb, but you can take their life here? I understand the the dilemma. If you hold to it's a right to life, only God can take a life. That kind of to me, it's quite easy to understand. The baby in the womb has done nothing, has had no chance to do anything wrong. And the people who get the death penalty, and I and I just challenge anybody, go online and read the stories of people sitting on death row. You won't sleep well. You won't sleep well. They're rough stories. Now, are there innocent people? Of course. Of course, because again, we don't have perfect judges and we don't have perfect jurors. Okay, but imagine this anybody who gets judgment, who gets killed by God, or gets judged by God deserves it because he's a perfect judge, knows the whole story. Okay, third one God doesn't, this is an important one. God doesn't lose his temper or fly off the handle when he's talking about judgment. He doesn't do that. God is totally wonderful, totally merciful, loves people, loves all of us, love Korah and those that he had to take their life. He only judged those who absolutely rebel against him. Okay?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:You ready for number four? Number four. Christ, this is a beautiful thing. Christ, his own son, had to die for sin, and this is the ultimate proof that God believes in the justice of the death because of sin, because he even put his own son to death. You see what I mean? So it's not like he just puts bad guys to death. His son carried all of our sin on him. And so the wrath of God, instead of being poured out on individual humans, was all poured out right on Jesus Christ, and he put his own son to death. And the Bible says a strange thing. It says it pleased him. It pleased him to kill his son. Now, what is he saying there? He just loved people so, so much that it brought joy to think that even at the death of my my son, as horrible as it was, and it was beyond terrific. Teaching God is giving us is that's how great his mercy is, that he was pleased. Why? That Jesus died, and Jesus, it says how to get through, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, probably hanging there naked as he was brutalized and murdered. And and yet he forgives the guys who died. This is the beautiful picture. Whenever you want to think about God's judgment, always remember that the judgment was applied to his own son. And it was applied for you and I. What do you think?
SPEAKER_01:It's a pretty crazy, pretty crazy thought. I think that's one that takes some, you know, contemplating it should take some contemplating and then to think he didn't stay dead, you know, he rose again so we can have life. It's pretty powerful. I think that's a really compelling way to think about uh deadly force and what what God is willing to do to save his people uh all through time.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's listen, I I you know, I kind of talk fast and I'm making light of it. Look, I don't understand the Korah and his guys either. I don't understand why he got it and others didn't. You know what I mean? Like I just watched something on Forensic Files last night, this horrific child murder. I'm like, man, that guy he he was executed, but I thought he should get killed ten times. I mean, that he's so evil. But the truth is, me picking who dies and who lives and dies, it's kind of tough because I don't, I'm not righteous, I'm not perfect like him. So anyway, okay, five. If these are true, uh here, here this is really I think could be helpful for you. If this is true, what I've said, everybody deserves justice. God is totally righteous and the perfect judge. He deals with sin, the wages of sin is death. He uses his own son to die. Then the real question doesn't become, we don't become surprised that he killed a few people. What we really get surprised is that any of us survive. God could kill anybody he wants. He's God. He could do whatever he wants. But somehow, in spite of the fact that I'm rebellious to God, in spite of the fact that I'm certainly not deserving, he keeps giving me breath.
SPEAKER_01:That's what it's like when you look at all he's capable of, all he's proven he can do, who God says he is, and what he says he can do, and what you've seen, the perspective and the posture changes to like grace and mercy that I'm here, that I've given breath, that I have another day, that he has chosen to save me, that I do have the opportunity to accept Jesus as my savior and follow him. It's it shifts what you're looking at in the equation of who God is, from why that and why that person to why not me, why not my.
SPEAKER_00:I think that these uh these other things to see here is that when these murders or not murders, uh deaths, deaths happened, um in in uh in civil society, the ones I saw as a policeman or whatever, um, there is not always a linear track to change that there was something happened as good as a result of it. We don't have that. We we do not have that. We can't have any proof that the capital punishment, you know, is effective for this. Probably a lot of reasons for that. It's interesting in the stories I've read, and I have not read all of them or studied them enough to be sure of this, but in most of those cases, they were examples to the rest of the Jewish people or the new Christians, like if you take in Acts 5 when Ananias and Sapphira were taken home or taken, their lives were taken by God. In those stories, it was done with the idea, with the impact that the whole church was changed as a result of this. And the same thing happened at these deaths in the Old Testament, where it generally elevated the holiness of God, it elevated reverence for God, and he used it to change lives. So let's just think if he's willing to lose his own son for humanity, would he be willing to take one bad guy so that a bunch of others could repent? And for generations, they'd know the story of Korah and they'd always say, That God is righteous and just. I'm not messing with them, I'm gonna get right with them now, just like anybody watching this right now should do the same thing.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Your deal should not be to lay in bed at night and judge God and evaluate God. Oh God, now you're on the judge's robe, you got the judge's robe, and God sits at the defense table and you choose whether or not God did right or wrong. I wouldn't spend two seconds doing that. What I would do is I would evaluate, evaluate instead my own heart before God, and that God, every breath I've taken is by his mercy. And what I need to do is make sure I am right with him. And that would require repentance of your sin. On his fall on your face before him and ask him for mercy, and our savior will come, and he says, He who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And Kor could have been saved, and all the guys that lost their lives, if they'd have done that exact thing, they could know for sure they're going to heaven when they die.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's it's like you see God's grace and mercy in our life, and then you also see how much we shouldn't mess with God in the time he's given us because it is like it's actually quite serious obeying God, not to not uh you know messing with what God desires and asks of us. It's not worth it, you know. Not that he's gonna strike you dead today, but just that his ways are worth worth following him in his ways because certainly, certainly should elevate our view of God and his power as well. That could be um, you know, the Holy Spirit within us, living with him with grace and mercy and his justice and all of that. Or you see the flip side of like, no, God's power and wrath is is a real deal not to be messed with.
SPEAKER_00:I've had this happen police work uh where I've talked to guys that the policeman or the prison guard or whatever sees the bad guy doing something. I remember this uh guy who's now a pastor, he was on the prison yard and he was stabbing a guy to death like this in a prison guard in jail. And the prison guard shot from the from and uh he just missed him, but they were able to grab him and stop him from killing this guy. When he was in the cell just a few minutes later, he had the blood all over him, he's standing there. The guy who fired, the the officer fired, walked up to him and said, I don't know why, but God wants you alive. Somebody moved my hand when I when I was about to fire and and and it spared your life. Now, here's the question uh inmate and that prison guard now he looks at that guy and he says, He could have killed me, but he didn't. He could have killed me, but he didn't. And so now he he loves or he appreciates that prison guard, the same one who he had animosity for five minutes before. In the same way, if you change your thought process and you realize this God could kill me, he could take my life, but he didn't. And so you have this great relationship with God because in fact, he is the merciful one. He could have, but he doesn't. And he's given me this great life and he's renewed me and he gives me love for the Bible and so on.
SPEAKER_01:We'll be back for more on the Cops, Criminals, and Christ podcast.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, talk to you then.
