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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Every Cop Should Have a Backup

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I know this is age old wisdom and since I’ve been preaching “having a plan” for six months on this site, you would think that I would have had a back up.  Last week the CopsAlive site was hacked for the third time in it’s short six month lifespan.  Both other times the web hosting service had a backup file that could be restored but not this time, this time it was corrupted.  So as a wonderful learning lesson on the six month anniversary of CopsAlive we were down and out for a week.

We are back and if you’ll be patient we will manually upload all the old content and try to put CopsAlive back together again. Here’s a short audio message from our editor.

Thanks for your patience and thanks for your loyal readership for six months.  We have some great things in store, so please stay tuned.  And if you are running a website or any kind of web business (which I think you should be!) please learn from my lesson and have a backup that is in your control!

We’re Back

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Thanks for your patience everyone while we work out some back-end issues.  We lost all of our content from our short six months in operation but we expect everything to be rebuilt better than new.

We will be back as your are accustomed very soon, and we thank you for your continued support!

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Song about Fallen Officers- “In Memory of…”

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My good friends at C.O.P.S. (Concerns of Police Survivors) have let me know about a new song by Derik Schumacher entitled “In Memory of…” about police officers who have fallen in the line of duty.  The song was written by Paul Davis & Derik Schumacher and Derik also Co-produced the song with Charlie Craig.  “In Memory of” is being used as a fund raiser for C.O.P.S. and I encourage your support.

You can download the song by visiting http://www.inmemoryofthem.net/ and if you need any more encouragement visit the blog of stories contributed by family members of those killed in the line of duty.

For more information about C.O.P.S. please visit: http://www.nationalcops.org/

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As Cops We Must Prevent Police Officer Suicides

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Police Officer Suicides are becoming an epidemic.  Over the last several years suicides by police officers have out numbered the number of officers killed in the line of duty by 3 to 1.  It is estimated that between 400 to 500 officers take their own lives each year.  This is a major problem and as law enforcement professionals we must resolve this problem ourselves.  The first step is awareness and then we must take action.  I started this blog at www.copsalive.com when a friend and former Sheriff’s Patrol Sergeant committed suicide.  No one saw it coming and in my twenty three years as a police officer… Continue reading

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As a Cop Are You Achieving Your Vision in Life or In Your Career?

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Do you have a vision for what it is that you really want in life or in your police career?  Police officers are just like most people when it comes to procrastinating about a plan for their lives or even their careers in law enforcement.  Experts and psychologists agree that when people spend time really articulating what they want, they have a much better chance of getting it, so life planning and career planning can have a tremendous impact upon your success.  This usually includes writing down your thoughts and goals so you have a sort of map to get where you want to go.  Here’s an interesting video from YouTube that might also help you.

Continue reading

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Cops, Blogging and Business

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Cops and other law enforcement professionals are just like other people when it comes to wanting a way to increase their income. Many like me have taken to creating side business on the internet and in that vein several people have asked me lately for resources intended for bloggers.  So like a good blogger, I decided to write an article to describe some of my thoughts.

Can you earn a living on the internet?  Some say so, and many say the way to build your base of support is through blogging or writing a frequent article on a blog or web log. Continue reading

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Master Wellness Training

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While working on the CopsAlive blog post “Successful Cop – Jeffery Hart“, I came across another interesting and successful police officer who is doing cool things to help you and your law enforcement agency create a successful Wellness Program.  I love it when a police officer is successful in his or her career and then does something else to improve the world or their own lives and it’s an added bonus when they do something that helps other cops.  That’s what this thirty year detective does with his wellness traiining. Continue reading

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Successful Cop – Jeffery Hart

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Lt. Col. Jeffery Hart is the Assistant Chief of Police in Morganfield Kentucky, he is a successful cop and he is a lucky man.  I came across Jeff’s story when I was researching the heart defect that took the life of Colorado Police Officer Nick Heine.  See our blog on “Are You Planning for the Un-Expected?”  Officer Heine was a healthy 30 year old police officer who collapsed when he was running from one disturbance call to another.  He died later at the hospital from an undiscovered heart defect.  Jeff was 43 years old when he was responding to a robbery alarm and had a major heart problem that nearly took his life.  Jeff was lucky and had a chance to change his life and health, Nick was not.  How’s your health?  What do you do on a daily basis to maintain your wellness? Continue reading

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Even Cops Can Get Hooked by Phishing

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CopsAlive was on the wrong side of a phishing trip two weeks ago when we were hacked by a phishing scheme that used our server to host a false web page for a well known bank. It is believed that the hackers were trying to collect personal information from customers of that bank and used our domain to hide their scheme. Then yesterday we were hacked by a group that make a game of taking over sites and leaving nasty messages in place of the actual site. We’ve learned a few things from all this albeit the hard way. Let us share some tips for you. Continue reading

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Cops and Superstitions

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Today’s date 08/08/08 apparently has so much power as a lucky number that the Chinese Olympic Committee actually picked today as the date of the opening ceremonies for the Summer Olympic Games with a starting time of 8:08:08 PM!

Are you superstitious? Continue reading