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The Silent Assailant

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The Silent Assailant by Julie Zielinski

EDITORS NOTE: Julie Zielinski is a Law Enforcement Survival Institute faculty member and lost her law enforcement deputy son to suicide. You can read her story in her book: Matt’s Last Call and you can read more here on CopsAlive – Here: My Journey by Julie Zielinski and Here: Matt’s Last Call or listen to our interview with Julie on the CopsAlive Podcast Here: “Matt’s Last Call: Surviving Our Protectors”

Recently, we were in Washington D.C. attending a banquet called Honoring the Service of Law Enforcement Officers Who Died by Suicide. This first time banquet was held in conjunction with National Police Week and was sponsored by BLUE H.E.L.P. Its purpose was to honor and recognize the service of offices who made that fateful decision and their survivors. It is Blue HELP’s mission to put names and faces to the men and women of Law Enforcement whose emotional injuries become too much to bear. Although the number of Law Enforcement personnel who take their own lives typically exceeds… Continue reading

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Managing The Trauma Suffered In Law Enforcement

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This week we will be continuing our online discussions about modern policing as part of our Tactical Resilience™ & Ethical Policing Project. We want to ignite a thoughtful, and regular, discussion about issues critical to the success of modern policing and we want to involve you! To that end we are planning regular webinars that will last about an hour.  talking about how law enforcement officers, and other first responders, manage the trauma they encounter within their careers. Our focus will be on the prevention, management and recovery from trauma.

Our guest will be Law Enforcement Survival Institute faculty member NYPD Intelligence Detective First Grade (Ret.) Mordecai Z. Dzikansky.

As part of NYPD’s Manhattan South Homicide Squad Det. Dzikansky responded to, and participated in the investigation at, ground zero following the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Additionally, from January 2003 through 2008… Continue reading

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How Do You Build Integrity? Join us for a live discussion!

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Join us…

John Marx and Chaplain Cary A. Friedman invite you to join us for a new online discussion about modern policing as part of our Tactical Resilience™ & Ethical Policing Project. We want to ignite a thoughtful, and regular, discussion about issues critical to the success of modern policing and we want to involve you! To that end we are planning regular webinars that will last about an hour. They will involve a little discussion, a little training and a few guests along the way.

Our next online session will be LIVE on Wednesday May 8th at Noon Eastern time. Space will be limited to the first 100 people who register in advance.

Register by visiting our website at: https://tacticalresilience.org/online-training/
and CLICKING on the link that says: CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Please register in advance so we know who is attending and so you can get the instructions about how to connect to the meeting! Continue reading

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Armor Your Self™ 2019 Workshops

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Have you read the 458 page softcover resilience textbook: Armor Your Self: How To Survive A Career In Law Enforcement and want to learn more?

We are bringing our Armor Your Self™ workshops to a city near you:

Armor Your Self™ 2019 Preliminary Spring Workshop Calendar includes workshops in Daytona Beach, Florida; Columbus, Ohio; Lansing, Michigan; Omaha, Nebraska; Pueblo, Colorado; Glendale, Arizona and one hosted by the Louisiana State Police.

To learn more or register for one of these workshops visit: https://armoryourself.com/register/

The Armor Your Self™ project is a powerful concept that will begin building the foundations of law enforcement health and wellness for your personnel, your families and for your organization.

The program is taught as a Resilience Research Learning Laboratory with all the participants researching, discussing and learning information that is specific, and important to them.

Each participant receives a copy of the 458 page softcover resilience textbook: Armor Your Self: How To Survive A Career In Law Enforcement by John Marx (a $24.95 value).

Participants will find the tools they need to recognize the symptoms of the toxic effects… Continue reading

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CopsAlive Hosts 2019 TREPP Webcasts

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John Marx and Chaplain Cary A. Friedman invite you to join us for a new online discussion LIVE webcast series about modern policing as part of our Tactical Resilience™ & Ethical Policing Project.

We want to ignite a thoughtful, and regular, discussion about issues critical to the success of modern policing and we want to involve you!

To that end we are planning regular LIVE webcasts that will last about an hour. They will involve a little discussion, a little training and a few guests along the way.

Please watch our welcome video:

Our sessions will be held regularly, approximately once a month, usually on a Wednesday at Noon Eastern Time.

Space will be limited to the first 100 people who register in advance.

Register here: https://tacticalresilience.org/online-training/

Each session will be recorded and posted on our CopsAlive YouTube Channel after the event

Please reach out by email or online and send us your thoughts before the webinar and we will incorporate them into the discussion… Continue reading

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Is Our Police Culture Causing Suicides?

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It’s National Suicide Prevention Week again (September 9th – 15th, 2018) in the United States which is a week-long campaign to inform and engage health professionals and the general public about suicide prevention and warning signs of suicide.

I lost one of my law enforcement friends to suicide in 2007 and that’s what prompted me to start CopsAlive.com.

In my opinion, law enforcement suicide is a symptom of what ails our profession, and it should be an priority issue to resolve — but it hasn’t been.

This year, I thought I would follow suit with some other enlightened thinkers on this issue and challenge you to think about how our law enforcement culture contributes to suicide, and how we can fix that… Continue reading

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The Visitor That Would Not Leave

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How do you handle that one guest that just will not leave? I recently heard a definition for what trauma is. Trauma was defined as: when you leave the scene, but the scene does not leave you. That definition resonated with me. How many calls did I leave that did not leave me?

I know we all have scenes and calls that have not left us. Some are years old. Some are obvious. The larger scenes and the obviously tragic calls stay with us. It is expected. In my department, certain calls are expected to cause trauma such as an officer involved shooting or a line of duty death.

When something like that happens, peer support is automatically activated and… Continue reading

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What Can We Do To Better Help One Another?

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I read two very interesting articles today and I want to hear your opinion.

The first was something that someone sent me on Social Media entitled Diary of a Suicidal Cop

The second as an article posted by the National Center for PTSD entitled Help Someone You Love on PTSD Awareness Day. (Today is National PTSD Awareness Day – see below for links and resources).

I’d like you to read both and then share your comments here about how we can better serve our brothers and sisters behind the badge.

We should not have to Suffer In Silence!

When I read the Diary of a Suicidal Cop, I am saddened, I am moved and I can readily identify with lots of the feelings, but that still doesn’t mean we can’t help those who need it most… Continue reading

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The Difference Between Spiritual Survival Training and Chaplaincy

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Over the past 18 years it has been my privilege to design and provide training for law enforcement officers in Spiritual Survival. My training addresses a very specific aspect of the law enforcement experience: the spiritual dimension. Spiritual Survival training is, I believe, a crucial aspect of training to help officers successfully negotiate the challenges of a law enforcement career. The goal is to help officers recognize and acknowledge the noble idealism and integrity within the human spirit that brings them into the career. It is this human spirit that can keep them devoted to their law enforcement mission, with all its challenges, disappointments and difficulties. My aim is to help them identify the toxins that daily deplete and exhaust their spirit, equip them with tools to nourish and replenish their precious idealism and integrity, and renew their commitment to faithful performance of their law enforcement mission.

Often, when police chiefs hear that I offer training for “Spiritual Survival,” they reassure me that their agencies already have chaplaincy services, so their agencies don’t need the spiritual survival training I offer. That’s when I gently explain that the two support structures, chaplaincy and Spiritual Survival training, are not the same.

Chaplaincy services inspire strong reaction – avid advocates and suspicious detractors. A common story among law enforcement executives tells of a skilled, dedicated chaplain who intervened to save a cop in distress; others regale me with anecdotes of chaplains who overstepped their bounds and trespassed into the realm of proselytizing. But in all cases I unequivocally assure law enforcement executives that Spiritual Survival training is not equivalent to chaplaincy.

Indeed, chaplaincy and Spiritual Survival training both support officers and agencies, and ought to be complementary. But they each have profoundly different goals.

REACTIVE BENEFICIARY OR PROACTIVE PARTICIPANT
The greatest distinction between chaplaincy and Spiritual Survival training is this: Chaplaincy is reactive by its nature, whereas Spiritual Survival training is proactive. Even more significant is the fact that officers who receive chaplaincy services are… Continue reading

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Police Officers and Firefighters Are More Likely to Die by Suicide than in Line of Duty

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A just-released White Paper on Mental Health and Suicide among First Responders commissioned by the Ruderman Family Foundation examines mental illness among police officers and firefighters, who commit suicide at a higher rate, and have PTSD and depression as much as 5 times higher… Continue reading