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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How Do Cops Communicate, Learn and Share Ideas on the Internet?

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CopsAlive wants to know how you communicate with each other and get information on the Internet.  We’re not talking about Google, Yahoo or other search engines here we are wondering about how police officers use the many social networking tools available on the internet like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Ning, LinkedIn, Hi5, Tagged, Skyrock, Friendster and others. Continue reading

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CopsAlive.com Needs Your Ideas and Input!

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CopsAlive needs your help. Our mission is to create a forum for cops to help other cops by engaging in discussions and sharing ideas and information to help each other plan for happy, healthy and successful lives on the job and beyond the job.

Most of all we need readers. If you like what you are reading here please pass it on. Send a link or a note to all of your law enforcement friends online or tell them to check out Continue reading

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What is your Legacy as a Police Officer?

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What legacy will you leave from your job in law enforcement?  Lives saved?  People helped? or Communities changed?  What legacy will you leave in life?  A healthy child?  A happy and financially secure family?  Maybe an improved world?

Do you ever even think about your personal or professional legacy?  If not, maybe now would be a good time to think about it and maybe to even start a little planning… Continue reading

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CopsAlive Cruise 2009 a Success!

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Beach at The Baths on Virgin Gorda BVI

Beach at "The Baths" on Virgin Gorda BVI

The CopsAlive Cruise 2009 is over and it was a tremendous success. We travelled from Fort Lauderdale Florida to the beautiful Caribbean Sea.  We travelled to the islands of St. Marteen, St. Kitts and Tortola.  Some of us also took a short excursion over to the island of Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands.  There were seven police officers in our larger group which also included the wedding party for one of the cops.   We had a fun and relaxing time under the sun on the Carnival Miracle as it cruised between these beautiful islands of the Caribbean.

CopsAlive was also part of a larger group of 267 internet… Continue reading

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New Year’s Resolutions for Cops

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As a police officer, sheriff’s deputy or corrections officer do you have a list of New Year’s Resolutions?

It seems that some resolutions that would be appropriate for peace officers or those in law enforcement would include a list that started with these questions: Continue reading

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Merry Christmas to Law Enforcement Officers Around the World

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Police Officers are a very giving and charitable group.  I have never visited a police or sheriff’s department where the staff and officers or deputies weren’t involved in many charities within their communities.  Many cops and corrections officers donate their time and money to help children, animals, families in need, our schools, and churches etc.  I expect that if you can find a charity, then you can find some cops involved to help them.

At this time of year everyone has these things on their minds but cops do these things year round.  We at CopsAlive want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas, or best wishes on any holiday that you celebrate and we want to wish you all a very safe, happy and healthy New Year.  Thanks for all the great things you do all year long!

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Gratitude is a Cop’s most Powerful Tool

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” At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.
Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

Albert Schweitzer

John F. Kennedy expressed it eloquently when he said, “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”

Gratitude is a powerful tool.  I used it so many times as a hostage negotiator when I was dealing with… Continue reading

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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/