Before The Badge: Lt. Keith Doherty, Classically Trained Chef In Phoenix

Phoenix AZ

03 May, 2021

5:30 AM

Description

Press release from the City of Phoenix: May 2, 2021 Phoenix Police officers come from many different backgrounds, including different careers. The department's video series, 'Before the Badge,' profiles some of those careers, and the diversity they bring to the department today. Keith Doherty is the lieutenant over the Crisis Intervention Teams and Community Response Squad with the Phoenix Police Department. But he hasn't always been in law enforcememnt. Before the badge, he was a classically trained chef. Doherty basically grew up in a kitchen. Born and raised in the Boston area, his grandparents owned a bakery called Wolfies in Cape Cod. That is where he got his culinary start."I worked the overnight shifts baking with my brother, my sister as well," Doherty explained. "I could bake a cake and muffins [as a] 12, 13 year old."For college, he followed in his brother's footsteps, also a chef, and headed to Johnson and Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. "It is one of the strictest types of schools," Doherty said. "It is a full chef's uniform for every class, including academic class. Just like a regular college, it's an accredited university. I took math, and science, and history type courses. But I also took Intro to French Cuisine. I took dining room service, fine dining, wine tasting, sommelier type classes. While in school, he interned at a Mediterranean spot in London, and worked in a couple restaurants inside Fenway Park. After graduation, he eventually transferred to the management side of the restaurant business. From there, he went into law enforcement. "They definitely do not connect," Doherty laughed as he described his jump in careers. Turns out, in addition to family ties in cooking, there is also a family connection to public safety. Doherty's father was a Boston firefighter and his grandfather was a Boston police officer. "One of the challenges is, when it transitions from the kitchen to running restaurants, it's a nearly 24-hour-a-day job," Doherty said. "It's salary, it's a lot of hours, in a kitchen, 12-15 hours a day. And at that point, I was getting older. Decided I just needed a change." After moving to get away from the snow, he started at the Phoenix Police Department in 2000, and has been working his way up the ranks since then. Now a leader of the department's Community Engagement Bureau, he said the food-service industry experience was not for nothing. "The customer service side of both of my careers overlap greatly, and they overlap every single day," Lt. Doherty said. "I think that most every career field out there has something that transitions into law enforcement. There's so many things that we haven't even thought of yet. Those folks in other careers are going to bring what we haven't thought of to us. And help us get to that next step." Lt. Doherty does still enjoy cooking. He said he splits the time cooking for his family with his wife, but especially still loves to bake — making cakes for every family member's birthday. This press release was produced by the City of Phoenix. The views expressed here are the author's own.