Author: Editor

John Marx was a Police Officer for twenty-three years and served as a Hostage Negotiator for nineteen of those years. He worked as a patrol officer, media liaison officer, crime prevention officer and burglary detective. Also during his career he served as administrator of his city's Community Oriented Governance initiative through the police department's Community Policing project. Today John combines his skills to consult with businesses about improving both their security and their customer service programs. John retired from law enforcement in 2002. When one of his friends, also a former police officer, committed suicide at age 38, John was devastated and began researching the problems that stress creates for police officers. He decided he needed to do something to help change those problems and he wanted to give something back to the profession that gave him so much. He started a project that has evolved into CopsAlive.com. Put simply, the mission of CopsAlive is to save the lives of those who save lives! CopsAlive.com gathers information, strategies and tools to help law enforcement professionals plan for happy, healthy and successful careers, relationships and lives.
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Nutritional Tips for Cops

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CopsAlive is proud to welcome a new contributor as we introduce Tina Ulatowski, MSW who will be offering input on nutritional issues for police officers and law enforcement agencies.

As a three time cancer survivor, Tina now shares her story as well as educates individuals, groups, schools, and healthcare professionals on the correlation between nutrition and disease.   She is the author of the book “What Your Doctor Doesn’t Tell You, A Simple Guide between Nutrition and Disease”.

Tina is a native of Colorado.  She obtained her Associates of Applied Science, with an emphasis in Criminal Law in 1992.  In 1994, she obtained a Bachelor of Arts Degree with a Major in Social Work and a minor in Criminal Law. Then in 1999 while battling some of life’s obstacles… Continue reading

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Family Support Groups for Law Enforcement Agencies

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It’s tough being married to a police officer or even being the parent or sibling of a law enforcement officer. There is fear and worry about what might happen to them. There are the moments every time you hear something about a police shooting or an accident involving a police car on the news and you don’t know if it’s your loved one or not. And there are just the everyday issues of dealing with someone who works nights, odd shifts or gets called into work on their time off. Then there is the issue of stress. Some cops share their stresses which can make their loved ones worry more; and some officers shut out their loved ones, and won’t talk about what’s eating at them, which also causes stress in their relationships. The good news is that all around the world there are groups and people starting groups to help these family members cope with these and many other issues. The other day I had a chance to interview two people who are working to do just that for their law enforcement agency…

It was my pleasure to interview Heidi Hansen and Michael Mejia. Michael is an officer with the Twin Cities Police Authority which is a combined department of the communities of Corte Madera and Larkspur California, and Heidi works at a local hospital. I met Heidi through the National Police Wives Association (NPWA) where she was on the board of directors until just recently. Michael and Heidi are living together and raising a child together and both are attending college full time while working full time as well. In addition to all of that, they are working to form a Family Group at the Twin Cities Police Authority to help support family members of the law enforcement agency. Continue reading

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Stress Management for Police Officers

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I had a chance to interview Lisa Wimberger of Trance Personnel Consulting Group the other day about stress and stress management for police officers and it was a fascinating discussion.

Lisa works on a national level with law enforcement officers suffering Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, both at the agency and individual police officer levels. Lisa’s ability to bring tools to law enforcement agencies offers a proactive solution to stress management and crisis intervention. She provides techniques that are a simple pathway to a healthier police officer and their law enforcement organization as well.

The Denver Post covered one of her recent classes… Continue reading

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Crisis Intervention for Police Officers

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Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing Sean Riley the Founder and President of Safe Call Now, a crisis intervention program for law enforcement personnel located in the Seattle area of Washington State here in the U.S..

Safe Call Now works with over 400 volunteers to help law enforcement officers, fire fighters and other emergency service workers navigate through any crisis that might challenge their lives and careers.

The program has a very notable board of directors and has the backing of many state, local and federal organizations.

According to Washington State Lt. Governor Brad Owen
“the program was set up to help officers and their families through difficult circumstances. This confidential service… Continue reading

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British Police Blog Interviews CopsAlive Editor

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A Police Sergeant from the U.K. who writes an English police blog called “The Twining Chronicles” has interviewed John Marx our Editor in Chief.

The interview may shed a light on the differences and similarities between policing in the USA and policing in the United Kingdom, but the bottom line is that law enforcement officers are the same everywhere.

Please check it out and leave a comment:

http://twining.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/we-interview-the-author-of-copsalive-from-the-united-states/

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Visual Listening with author Rik D. Middleton

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We recently had a chance to review the book “Don’t Look at Me in That Tone of Voice” and found it fascinating. We interviewed Author Rik D. Middleton who wrote the book at the urging of a friend who is with the Glendale California S.W.A.T. team and the state secretary for California Association of Hostage Negotiators. She had heard him speak on communications and asked if he could do the presentation for her team. Now using the book as part of his program Rik travels the country training law enforcement teams on “The Art of Visual Listening”. Rik is President of Sage Cadre Publishing and the Chief Operating Officer of ExecutivExpression Inc.

ExecutivExpression offers services that include accent reduction, as well as focusing on important subtle cultural and functional aspects of language and communication.

You can learn more about his training programs at:
www.visual-listening.com

You can listen to our complete interview with Rik by clicking the Replay botton below

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Police Suicide is an International Problem

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We’ve mentioned this before but as I have been watching the news lately there seems to be a preponderance of evidence to support this claim and I wanted to share some of the links with you.  To begin with you will find an excellent article in yesterday’s Boston Globe Sunday Magazine that has an excellent perspective on the issues.  CLICK HERE to read their article.  Forgive the links showing below but I wanted you to see where they are coming from.

Switzerland – January 26, 2010 – Police chief found dead on eve of Davos meeting
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g7hN7U5Anz-aL4lR33WLhzfDYsDg

Taiwan – A policeman shot himself to death early January 23, 2010 at the Hsinsheng South Road police substation of the Daan Precinct in Taipei, marking Taiwan’s second police shooting suicide in 10 days.
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/local/taipei/2010/01/24/242073/2nd-police.htm

Philadelphia – January 25, 2010 Police in Philadelphia say an off-duty officer who died following a crash earlier in the week apparently killed himself.
http://www.timesleader.com/news/ap?articleID=3638927

India – December 22, 2009 ‘Harassed’ by senior, cop commits suicide. A sub-inspector with the… Continue reading

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A Diet that Works for Cops!

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For those of you who are looking for New Year’s fitness ideas heres one from my friend and fitness author Jon Benson who was also on our cruise and that was part of a 3-week business vacation during which he LOST 11 pounds of body fat while I gained 6 pounds on the same cruise.  I met Jon on our first CopsAlive Cruise three years ago and this is a product that we use and have sold on CopsAlive for over a year.  If you are in law enforcement and struggle to maintain your wellness or are a police officer who is having trouble losing weight this might be for you.

Here’s an email Jon sent me this week detailing how he lost weight while I gained on the same trip… Enjoy!

John Marx

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How I dropped 11 lbs… on vacation?

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It was the weirdest thing …

I mean, I’ve been around you know? I’ve had just about every body and fat loss experience you can think of… the good, the bad, the ugly…

… and now the really bizarre.

Here’s the story:

I took off on an 8-day cruise to the Caribbean. This was a “business” cruise (yeah, right)… and I knew there was no way to eat the way I prefer to eat. At least not ideally. After that I had to speak in Tampa Florida at a fitness summit, then off to Las Vegas for yet another summit meeting.

All-in-all I was gone for almost three weeks.

First thing that I knew had to go was my “ideal” diet plan.

That’s my “Extreme” Plan on the Every Other Day Diet plan…

CLICK HERE

There are three plans in EODD:  The Primer Plan, which is literally “every other day”. You get to eat your favorite foods… Continue reading

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CopsAlive Cruise 2010 A Success!

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Our Ship

Our Ship

We just got back a week ago from another successful law enforcement retreat at sea. The CopsAlive Cruise 2010 was a success with current and former police officers on the ship from Colorado, California, Utah, New York and Texas. The CopsAlive group was part of a larger group of 430 entrepreneurs from 17 countries who exchange ideas about how to do do business on the internet.

We joined them in mastermind and training sessions to learn about how to improve our online businesses and in some cases make money from the internet while still working a full time career. If you have a side business on the internet you might want to consider coming with us in 2011.  READ MORE… Continue reading

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What’s it Like to Be Married to a Police Officer?

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Yesterday I had a chance to talk with Linda, a police officers wife, and a member of the board of directors of The National Police Wives Association.  Linda and I had an excellent discussion about what it’s like to be married to a cop and what it means to be in a relationship with someone in a law enforcement career.  As a police wife, Linda told me that she has to be part of an entire law enforcement agency’s family and all that comes with it.  She told me about creating an support network with other police wives and how she deals with stress.  We talked about raising kids in a police family and about how cops deal with line of duty deaths.

You can learn more about The National Police Wives Association or contact Linda directly by CLICKING HERE to visit their website at www.NationalPoliceWivesAssociation.org.

If you would like to listen to our interview please click the replay button below or RIGHT CLICK HERE (that’s CONTROL CLICK if you use a Mac) to download (SAVE LINK AS…) a copy of the mp3 file.