Dale Sutherland lived many lives during his lengthy career as an undercover cop with the Washington, DC police.
Once, he posed as a body shop owner. Another time, it was a Philadelphia mobster. On other occasions, he was in the import/export business — or just another heroin addict scoring drugs on the corner.
But though it all — including his 29-year run on the force — he treasured one role above all else: Preacher.
“I was a pastor and a policeman,” Sutherland, 60, of Vienna, Virginia, told The Post last week. “So I would be in Washington at night, making drug buys posing as a guy who owned a recording studio, and I’d be getting calls from church about a counseling meeting I had the next day.”
“Or, I would be at the church getting ready for a sermon, and I’d be getting texts or phone calls from drug dealers coming down with a large shipment of drugs,” he continued. “So it was like both worlds were really crazy together. It was a little confusing.”
Now, 11 years after he retired from the DC police, Sutherland has started his own podcast — appropriately dubbed “Cops, Criminals and Christ” — in which he not only explores how those three worlds intertwined, but also the peculiar dichotomy of being a God-fearing, Bible-toting man who lied for a living.
“The thing that I’m really good at is lying,” Sutherland, now a pastor at the CityLight Church in Falls Church, Virginia, said with a laugh. “I’m really good at that. Which is not exactly what you want from your local pastor. I scammed people for 22 years — I was telling them somebody I was not.”
“But the way we look at it is, the Bible is very clear about society needing protection from bad guys,” he said. “And this was a way to faithfully help the community to rid themselves of really bad people.”
“That was the way I mentally saw it,” the married father-of-three continued.
“And spiritually, I thought it was okay to go to the strip clubs or buy drugs and hang around these really rotten people with that goal. Because I really believed it was the best way to catch these guys. Nobody else is going to get them like we got them.”
Born in northern Maine, Sutherland said he spent 22 years working mostly undercover as he and his colleagues tried to bust up the gangs that prowled the Capitol city’s streets — everyone from MS-13 to foreign drug cartels to ultra-violent street gangs.
Sometimes that meant simple street buys in DC or Manhattan’s Washington Heights, where the job sometimes took him.
Other times, it meant lengthy cases where he’d create an identity, then stay in-character for months at a time.
To Sutherland, though, it was all the same.
“You’re using the same kind of skills,” he said. “But if you can buy drugs from a crowd at 178th and Broadway — to me, that’s the heart of undercover work.”
Sutherland loved the job — he said he would do it again right now, if he could.
But a life on the street is not without heartbreak — or danger.
He was nearly killed more than a half-dozen times, he said.
And in 1992, an informant with whom he had grown close was gunned down by a vicious street gang he was investigating, in an incident that nearly claimed Sutherland’s life as well.
“This informant and I went to make a buy,” Sutherland said. “We were late, which was typical for me. But that ended up saving my life because they had planned that when we arrived, they were going to shoot us both in the car.”
“But because we were so late, they had given up,” he said. “So [the informant] got out of the car to go find them. And when he found them, they killed him … they shot him 28 times.”
“I had just been with this fella, I’d shared Jesus with him, I’d really got to know him,” Sutherland said. “We’d been together 10 minutes earlier. And now he’s riddled with bullets. It was a tough time, it was very sad.”
That’s where his faith came in, he said.
In fact, it’s the reason he became a cop in the first place.
“The basic deal was we really believe that everybody can have a personal, close relationship with Christ,” Sutherland said of the non-denominational church at which he preaches.
“That’s what I’ve been chasing my whole life. And I actually joined the police department so I could get better at it.”
Along the way, he saw the worst of humanity. But that only reaffirmed his beliefs.
“I mean, I was seeing sin alive,” he said. “When you’re driving around the city as a policeman, you see all the broken lives and the kids and what addiction does, what violence does, you’re like man, the Bible’s right. It’s actually right.”
Sutherland started his podcast — which is now three episodes deep — because he thinks it might be another way to spread the good word.
And a new documentary series called “Dale Undercover” — which premiered in April at the Cannes International Series Festival in France — could help that along.
“I think what happened in my life … is not that interesting,” he said. “But what I’ve learned is it’s another avenue, just another method to get the same message out.”
“I would more [likely] listen to an interesting story than … just a regular preacher,” he continued. “So maybe God could use, even me, to communicate this truth.”
“But through the story, more people might be open to hear it.”
