What Is YOUR Tactical Action Plan for 2012?

Editors Note: Please join me in welcoming our newest contributor Sgt. Mark St. Hilaire as he leads us off for a Happy, Healthy and Safe New Year!

The New Year’s Resolution: What Is YOUR Action Plan for 2012?

As I reflect back on 2011, I am a little overwhelmed thinking about the things that occurred over the past year in my life.  I have experienced many changes in my agency, new commitments within my family and my community service, illnesses and the deaths of loved ones and friends, some physical changes as I approach the golden anniversary of my birth and most of all, observing and reading about law enforcement officers who self-destruct in their careers through their unusual behavior and actions on and off the job.   It has been an emotionally exhausting time and I am grateful for the many training opportunities, the maintenance of my fitness-eating plan and especially my peers who helped prepare me to meet these challenges.

As this New Year begins, many people participate in the ritual of a New Year’s Resolution.  Many people accept the challenge and yes, many of our resolutions succumb to an early death.  I stopped making resolutions on the annual basis because I felt discouraged when I could not keep my resolutions.

In the New Year of 1996, I had been a police officer about 10 years. I weighed about 350 lbs.; I had a distorted view of my career, working nights, an adult beverage problem.   I had come to the point that I was so frustrated and I was miserable… Continue reading