Are You Living Your Life Like an Emergency?

CopsAlive is pleased to welcome a new contributor in Diane Sieg.  Diane was an emergency room nurse for over 20 years.  She wrote her first book, “STOP Living Life Like an Emergency”, because she wanted to illustrate and identify how so many of us were living in such a frenetic state of more, better, faster.

Are you Living Your Life Like an Emergency?
As an emergency room nurse for over twenty years, I witnessed overdoses, car accidents, heart attacks, and gunshot wounds.  More often than not, the patients I treated created their own emergencies.  Whether it was falling asleep at the wheel, ignoring warning signs, or rushing to get something done, the emergency living they participated in contributed to the events that brought them to the ER.
Why are we all in such a rush?  This can be especially true for you as police officers where emergency living is full of chaos, crisis, and panic.  It keeps us moving at warp speed, always thinking about… Continue reading

Beyond Officer Survival What’s Your Plan? Part 1

I’ve often wondered how dangerous is our profession when compared to others?

When you compare ours to other professions, we as cops only just made it into the top 10 just recently.  On the List of Most Dangerous Jobs we only made it to number 10 in 2007 and that was only because we as law enforcement officers were lumped in with other protective service occupations and that was just in the United States.

In 2007 police officers finally made it to number 10 according to this article on most dangerous jobs.  “Badge-wielding types took a serious hit.  Of all occupations, protective-service occupations suffered the greatest relative increase in workplace fatalities in 2007, jumping 20% to 314. Nearly one-half of those were police officers… Continue reading

Spirituality in Law Enforcement?

I had the privilege to attend an excellent seminar last week hosted by the Denver Police Department on “Spirituality, Wellness & Vitality Issues in Law Enforcement Practices”.  Our presenters were FBI Supervisory Special Agent Samuel L. Feemster, J.D. and Sergeant Ginger L. Charles, Ph.D. of the Arvada Police Department.  They asked some interesting questions and offered some unique perspectives on modern law enforcement practices.  Some examples include: “Is Law Enforcement a calling for you?” and “What courses were you trained in at the police academy?”, then  “What courses should you have been trained in at the academy?”

This seminar was not about just religion but about any spiritual influence that gives police officers the kind of character that allows them to endure the toxic nature of police work and maintain their sanity over the years of a demanding police career.  There was information presented that many, many more officers die from suicide, cancer and heart attacks than ever are killed in the line of duty and we discussed what leads police officers, true leaders of our communities, to chose suicide over life.

The question was asked how do you become a well rounded police officer?

They led an excellent discussion on… Continue reading

The Mathematics of Stress in Law Enforcement

Common wisdom always dictates that you must subtract things to make your life better.  If you are on a diet you must reduce calories, if you are on a budget you must reduce your debt, and if you are a cop you must learn to reduce the effects of negative stresses.

However, human nature really wants to add to our lives when we are stressed.  We drink more, smoke more or eat more.  Maybe as police officers we should take advantage of our human nature and find ways to add positive things instead of negative things that will only cause more stress and compound the problem. Continue reading