Culture

Ex-Cop Takes on New Villain: Spiritual Evil

Shawn A. Akers 9:39PM February 16, 2023

An ex-cop is on a fascinating mission to fight a truly sinister villain: spiritual evil.

Chris DeFlorio, a former officer with the New York Police Department, is using his investigative skills to help people who believe they’re facing ills from the demonic realm.

DeFlorio and his wife Harmony run New York Demonic Investigation, an organization that seeks to explore these potential scenarios.

“It wasn’t until I pretty much focused full-time into this area, which we’ll call demonology, through the church, [that] I started to try to differentiate … the secondary evil that I was seeing on the street in human beings,” he told Billy Hallowell for a forthcoming episode of the “Playing With Fire” podcast. “And then [I wondered], ‘What’s behind that? There, there must be a primary evil.'”

That’s when DeFlorio began to take a Bible-based approach to try and understand wickedness—a path that led him to apply his law enforcement skills to demonology and the biblical understanding of the manifestation of evil.

Harmony DeFlorio explained the roots of New York Demonic Investigation were set in 2009, when the family became Christians and almost immediately launched a homelessness ministry.

On Chris’ NYPD shifts, he started talking to the homeless and trying to help them out. Harmony also took part in the outreach.

“We would give toys, and we would make sandwiches and things like that,” Harmony said. “And then it just grew where we would go out and preach the gospel.”

Chris, who charges nothing for his spiritual services, said they believe God put it on their hearts to engage in these outreaches.

“It just grew over the years,” he said of the effort. “I would sit on the cardboard with [the homeless and] talk with them, sharing Jesus.”

Things changed for Chris when he felt called to Africa and encountered a man who some thought was having a seizure. But as a former paramedic, he knew something was off.

“I’ve seen thousands of seizures,” he said. “And something spiritually was going on at that moment. I looked at the man having this episode, and it was kind of like we locked eyes.”