A 59-year-old former Edmonton police officer, pastor, radio talk show host and ticketed journeyman sheet-metal mechanic is the Burnaby RCMP’s new police chaplain.
Patrick Tracy steps into the job this month, about five years after the department’s last chaplain, Cal MacLeod, vacated the volunteer post.
Born and raised in Edmonton and currently an instructor of police foundations at Discovery Community College in Surrey and a part-time security officer at Vancouver’s Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel, Tracy retired from policing in 2013 after a near-fatal, stress-related heart attack.
He is father to one son and one stepson and lives with his wife Nicole in the Lower Mainland.
The NOW caught up with Tracy recently to get his take on police life and the importance of spiritual support for people who work in a profession that’s “hard on your soul.”
What does a police chaplain do?
You do a number of things, like weddings or funerals for people within the membership. If they have a family crisis, every agency has an employee assistance program, which would be able to fix people up with therapists and counsellors, so I would be able to know who those people would be to get them in touch with the member. I can do a certain amount of counselling, but I’m not a psychologist, so I’m not going play with somebody’s life in that regard, but just get them in touch with proper resources. I’m also trained in critical incident stress debriefing.
Why is the position important?
I think it’s very important because it’s about support. In the world of law enforcement, they are more and more under greater scrutiny, and there’s greater expectations placed on our police officers and they need to have support in various shapes and sizes. To have a police chaplain to help navigate through some of these thorny places is important because it’s not threatening. In the RCMP, to be a chaplain, you cannot call yourself Reverend. Even though I am a reverend, you can’t call yourself Reverend because that would imply you’re a part of a certain faith franchise. You have to be fairly universalistic in your perspective.
What makes a good police chaplain?
Attention to detail and listening, that’s what makes a good police chaplain. Being able to be at times maybe assertive in assisting people but not aggressive. When I say attention to detail, I may be dealing with somebody who is outside of the Christian community, who may be a Muslim, who may be an atheist, but they choose to talk to me, and I have to honour that detail that this is not where their head or heart might be but they just need to bounce some things off of me as somebody they trust. What makes a good police chaplain, ultimately, is somebody who has the credibility to be trusted.
One of the reasons it is difficult to find a good institutional chaplain, whether it’s in a hospital, nursing home or police department, is because you can’t have somebody who’s got an agenda other than being there to nurture and sustain and take care of the wellness of the members. If your agenda is conversion, then you’re not going to be a good chaplain.
Have you ever volunteered in this capacity before?
When I was a police officer with the Edmonton Police, I was actually asked three times in my career to be the chaplain. I turned them down because I joined to be a cop, but in my time with the Edmonton Police Service, I did assist in chaplaincy duties when we were without a chaplain, and I was on the selection committee for the last two chaplains that the Edmonton Police had.
What draws you to the work?
My faith, ultimately, because I think there’s a bigger world than what we perceive there to be. I have such a passion for policing and the men and women who are in it, and what draws me to be the chaplain is that I know that this can assist them in getting home safely, in both the ultimate getting home and in the getting home at the end of every shift.
That’s what I want to do is I want to make sure that the people who are under my care get home in a healthy manner.
So when you say ‘safely’ you mean more than just physical safety.
Yeah. The policing career is hard on your soul. It’s like any front-line emergency service. It’s difficult on a person because many people see and experience things that I think, for the most part, are rather unnatural for us to see. We’re not meant to see people’s blood pooling around our feet at a call or to lift somebody down from a noose that they’ve hung themselves with or to have somebody pull a weapon on us. We’re not meant to do that but people are called to do that. I call policing a sacred profession. In the calling of something like that, you need to have some resources along the way to remind you that you’re not alone and to remind you why you took it up in the first place.
Has your policing experience left you uniquely equipped for this work?
Yeah, it informed me that very few things are black and white. The only things that are black and white are police cars, and not even all police cars are black and white.
In my case, because of my experience, I can approach and listen to the members because I have been there. I’m not imagining what it’s like; I’m not presuming what it’s like. What makes Patrick Tracy a good police chaplain is because Patrick Tracy has been a police officer and knows what it’s like to be chaplained well by police chaplains.
What’s the most difficult part of the work?
I think it would be dealing with somebody who’s lost hope. If they’ve lost hope in humanity or they’ve lost hope in themselves or they’ve lost hope in the organization, I think that’s the most difficult thing to deal with.
What do you do for them?
Listen. And one of the things I’ve done in lots of counselling – it’s a little exercise I do – I simply ask them, ‘If this was your son or daughter going through this, what would you tell them?’ It’s a bit of a paradigm shift in a way, and it kind of gets people to realign a little bit.
What’s the most rewarding part of the work?
Being able to see police officers go home safely. That’s it. The most rewarding part is being trusted by the rank and file to be part of their team.
How do you know that’s happened?
Sometimes you don’t, but you’ve done what you can. Sometimes you know it because you talk to them the next time. Policing is just an extremely negative place to be, and I’m not talking necessarily about crime. I’m talking about the internal politics and some of the other things that go on and it can be a very negative place.
Your background is Christian. How do you approach conversations with people who don’t share your faith?
I have a little bit bigger picture of God than that. There’s a prayer that goes, ‘Help me to honour who You are rather than just my idea of who You are.’ From a strictly Christian perspective, in the New Testament, Jesus is described as the mystery of God. Now, God’s a bit of a mystery, so when you say it double, like, here’s the mystery of the mystery, then we better be careful what kind of a nice neat little box we put Him into and how nicely we wrap it up because we might be wrong on that. So how I deal with people outside the faith is, I think that we are called – and this is an Old Testament thing – but ‘to do justice and love mercy and walk to humbly with our Creator.’ …
It’s my experience as a Christian that this has resonated best with me, so that’s what I know. It’s not like I’m going to say, ‘Well, Christianity is nothing.’ Christianity to me is profound and there are reasons why I’m a Christian, but I was asked to be the chaplain of more than just Patrick Tracy being a Christian.
What doesn’t work when you talk to someone who doesn’t share your faith?
If your faith perspective is such that it’s a nod and a wink, kind of like, ‘You know what, you’ll be fine because ultimately one day you’ll convert to my faith.’ If you are so close-minded that you can’t respect the fact that other people have perspectives and journeys that they’re walking on spiritually that are real for them and that are genuine – if you can’t appreciate that, then don’t do the job.
Did you learn that lesson first hand?
I didn’t grow up in a Christian home, and my wife’s an atheist, and I get why she’s an atheist and she gets why I’m a Christian. I respect her journey. My world of faith and religion, I try to make it around more than just words. I watch how she lives.
How much time will this commitment take?
There’s only a basic requirement of, I think, eight or 10 hours a month, but I certainly intend on putting more into it. When they need me, I’ll be there.
