Selling your home is a stressful endeavor no matter who you are, but when you’re a cop, it can be a little more so.  You’re inviting strangers into your home when you aren’t there.  Pictures of your family adorn the walls, your weapons are easily available, and your home could be open to criminals you’ve locked up in the past. Make your home more secure by following these easy steps: 1.  Take Down Family Photos This has multiple benefits, the least of which isn’t protecting your family from anyone who may recognize you in the photos and then have your address, the layout of your home, and a good idea of what your family looks like.   Additionally, it allows any non-nefarious potential buyer to see their own family inside your home, to picture their family hanging on the walls, and really envision themselves living there.    Most good real estate agents will tell you to do this anyway, but it’s especially important for LE families. 2.  Park the Patrol Car Elsewhere Your squad is a beacon to criminals, and criminals buy houses, too. If you have a take-home you can significantly lower the chances of being burned at home by parking at the precinct or other off-site location and driving in.  I know it’s a hassle, but it’s only briefly while you sell.   3.  Secure Your Weapons I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve walked into a law enforcement officer’s home when it was listed and seen guns lying out unsecured.  This is a huge liability risk for you.  Parents bring children to see homes all the time, and one careless moment from a parent or an inattentive agent can mean disaster for not only the family involved but also you, the homeowner.  That is definitely one “Dear Chief…’ letter you don’t want to write. Now that was an absolute worst-case scenario, but theft is also a possibility. Securing your weapons in a gun safe is ideal.  If you don’t have one, check with a buddy who does to see if you can store some stuff in his, or maybe check with your department to see if you can secure them at work.   Whatever you do, don’t leave them lying out on a bedside table, loaded, with one in the pipe.  That’s just asking for trouble. 4.  Take Down the Hero Wall Police love to put awards, plaques, blue line flags, and memorabilia on the walls of their home.  Go ahead and strip that down.  It will help keep you from being identified as LE, and it will also help the potential buyers with the visualization stuff I mentioned above. 5.  Hide or Remove Your Uniforms Keep your uniforms at work and dress in the locker room if possible.  If it’s not, have them ready to grab and go and put them in the car while you vacate the premises for a showing.  Your uniform is a plethora of intel for any potential scumbags who enter your home.  First, it alerts them to your career, which might trigger them to look for things like weapons, badges, ID cards, etc.  It also gives them information like your name, your department, and even the hours you work if your department has differing uniforms of the day based on shift.  Another possibility is hanging them in the owner’s closet I mention below.  6.  Make Sure Your Badge, Holsters, Duty Belt, and Any ID cards are Secured There are a lot of ways to out yourself and these all count, but these items also represent a dangerous opportunity for theft of extremely sensitive pieces.  You definitely don’t want to find yourself tracking down a badge after a day full of house showings.  Chalk this one under “Dear Chief…” letters you don’t want to write, too.  This one is another candidate for that owner’s closet, which brings me to… 7.  Consider an Owner’s Closet Have you ever stayed at a condo rental on the beach?  Ever notice that one closet with a lockable doorknob on it?  That’s what is traditionally called an owner’s closet. It’s where the owners of the condo store their personal effects so that when they come to stay in their own condo, they don’t have to lug tons of stuff with them. You can make one in your own home quickly and easily by grabbing a lockable doorknob from Home Depot or Lowes.  Swap it out for the doorknob on a small coat closet somewhere in your home.  Make sure the key is different than the key that opens your exterior doors.   Once that is done, you can simply load everything you don’t want out in the open, like gear and uniforms, into that closet, lock it, and you won’t have to worry about it nearly as much. 8.  Insist on an Electronic Lockbox An electronic lockbox is accessed by an app on a real estate agent’s phone.  Access to the app is tightly controlled by their association or board.  It’s not like a mechanical lockbox where a lazy agent can give the code to clients to let themselves in.  For this one, the agent has to physically open the box himself or herself.  I use a Supra iBox.  This particular system connects to the agent’s phone or an electronic key and emails the listing agent the moment it is accessed with the contact information of the person who opened it.  This gives us valuable data to know who is going in and out of your home and a pretty solid way to track down any troublemakers should something go wrong. The iBox also has a feature called a Call Before Showing (CBS) Code that requires a specific code the agent accessing the box must get from your listing agent. It adds another step to the process and makes things more difficult, so agents who lack understanding of your security concerns will often disable it, allowing anyone with the app to access your home unannounced.  I employ the use of the CBS code on all my occupied listings, and I take special care to ensure it’s active on those iBoxes attached to my highly sensitive clients. Additionally, mechanical lockboxes are very easily defeated, whereas a Supra iBox is not.  In fact, the iBox is designed, so that attempts to pry it open result in the carrier inside, which holds the key, folding in on itself and entombing the key. Agents who do not utilize the electronic lockbox system make that choice for many reasons, but the most common I hear is the expense.  The Supra iBox isn’t cheap, but it’s a worthwhile investment to protect my clients, in my opinion.   Stay away from cheap agents. 9.  Make Sure Your Realtor Understands Your Security Concerns Most real estate agents have little or no background in personal security. They do not understand the dangers you (and your family) face as a law enforcement professional.  Many would dismiss you as paranoid for asking that these extra security precautions be put in place.  Some might even innocently out you by putting into publicly viewable remarks that the house belongs to a law enforcement officer, hoping to attract people who realize that you probably take really good care of your stuff and have no idea how much of a target that makes your home. I highly recommend you hire a real estate agent like me, who comes from your world.  I spent 12 years on the job, so I get it.  I would love to interview for the role of your real estate agent in the Valley, and if we aren’t a good fit, I know several other realtors in the area with law enforcement experience to whom I can introduce you.  Please reach out if I can help you in any way.

I used to work a 9-5. Well, sort of. I had a set schedule, and it was overnight twelve-hour shifts. I worked for the man. And I took what scraps “the man” threw me along the way. And I performed, too. I did what I did at a high level. But, what did that get me? An occasional attaboy at most. It didn’t help my bank account. It didn’t help my future. My children aren’t better off because of it. What was the point?I punched a clock for almost all of my adult life. I graciously accepted poor working conditions and backstabbing “leaders” so that every two weeks like clockwork, money magically appeared in my bank account. Then, in 2013, I started a Facebook page because I was bored one day. There were few people doing that back in those days, and I quickly built a loyal following. One day a few months later, one of those loyal followers commented, “You should put that on a shirt.” That follower will never know how grateful I am. Hell, I don’t even remember his name. But, once I read it, a light bulb clicked, and in that instant, I became an entrepreneur. Over the next eighteen months, I sold t-shirts. A lot of them. I got bored and sold the company for what was at the time a significant amount of money to me. Then I started another business. And another. And another. Some worked, some failed, but my mind never stopped looking for the next angle. I would and still do wake up in the middle of the night unable to deviate from whatever new idea has consumed me. It is a blessing and a curse. That first business will always hold a special place in my heart. I call it my Slide Hustle, a business I started while working for the man that set me free and let me slide out of the prison I was in and set myself on a path to freedom. In June 2015, I left that “9-5” and have been totally dependent on my own ability to generate revenue for five years. For almost four of those, I have carried the livelihood of my entire family on my back, with my wife staying at home to take on the monumental task of raising our children. It has been incredibly stressful. There have been months where I thought I would go bankrupt, and there have been moments when I’ve made more money in a day than I’d previously made in a year. I’ve had to break myself down, crush my insecurities, admit my failures, and overcome my own self-doubt. It has been one hell of a ride. Over the last few years, I’ve been offered a few jobs. Most of them at least six figures. They offer a comfortable life, a set schedule, a nice 401k, even a little vacation time now and then. But, I escaped the life of a prisoner of my wages. I couldn’t go back. It would kill me. I have tasted the freedom of operating independently of the input of anyone else, and that liberation has ruined me.I’m an entrepreneur, hell-bent on making myself into something. I WILL change my family tree, leaving my children much better off than I was when I started. I WILL succeed. I WILL leave my mark. It is not something that remains to be seen, but rather a veritable certainty through sheer force of will. I want to welcome you to my website. Here, I will discuss things like being a good husband, being a good father, and making sound decisions that affect your future. With the help of other contributors, I will teach you how to be successful. And, if you want, together we will take you from the JOB you have to the LIFE you want.

When every single survival instinct was screaming run away, they ran toward automatic gunfire. Think about that. Despite all the protests, all the vitriol, all the hate and false accusations, Las Vegas Metro Police charged toward gunfire, two of them taking rounds in the process, risking their lives for strangers. These are the police officers I know. In the twelve years I was a police officer, I saw acts of selflessness and bravery over and over and over again. I can honestly and with a clear conscience say that I never, not once, saw someone abused for the color of their skin, their beliefs or ideals, or any other quantifier you can use to categorize people. But, I saw men and women charging into dangerous situations to protect others while everyone else ran more times than I can count. I’m not talking about news articles or clips from some distant city. I’m talking about in Alabaster and Bibb County. Places where I patrolled, and men and women I patrolled with. I’m damned sick and tired of the media demonizing police to line their pockets. This photo right here is the true representation of law enforcement in America.

Eight months ago, just before the effective date of my resignation from my former employer, I was injured in the line of duty. The injury seemed relatively minor, nothing more than a tweaked wrist on my dominant side. The worker’s comp doctor assured me it was just a deep bone bruise and nothing to worry about. I went through with my resignation and moved 1800 miles across the country in a leap of faith to join my now-wife in her home state. After being in Arizona for a couple of months, the wrist still hadn’t healed. I contacted worker’s comp, and they found a local specialist to send me to see. Two days before a scheduled PT test with a department out here I learned that my wrist had a torn ligament that would require surgery and nine months of recovery. Knowing that no agency would hire me if they found out how much light duty I would need over my first year, I had no choice but to drop out of the hiring process. I suppose I could’ve kept it to myself, gotten the job, then told them after, but as a police officer integrity is paramount. That was never really an option. Fast forward a few months, and I still haven’t had the surgery. I’ve decided to establish myself in another profession, one I can handle in a cast to the shoulder, and then get my wrist fixed so that I can support my family while I’m down. I’m likely sidelined for at least another year before I can pin on a badge if I ever can again. After being a cop most all of my adult life, experiencing life away from law enforcement has led me to some real revelations. Here are a few: 1. There is life absent police work I thought policing was my life, that I would never be whole or happy without it. That’s not true.   I don’t need a badge to be happy. It was and is a very important and influencing part of who I am. It is not all I am, though. It never has been. I had lost sight of that, I think. I’m not just a cop. I am a husband, a son, a brother. Those things are so much more important than being a cop. If and when I return to the job, it is my vow not to forget that. 2. Hypervigilance is exhausting It took a few months, but I’m no longer constantly looking over my shoulder. My eyes don’t scan quite as much as they used to do. Not every person that walks through the door is first considered a threat before a friend. Don’t get me wrong, my head isn’t in the sand or anything, but I’ve noticed a decrease in my level of over-alertness. It has been refreshing to say the least. Feeling relaxed more than I feel alert is pretty good. Foreign and weird, but good. I glance at the door now when someone walks in as opposed to sizing them up. My shoulders are less tense. I laugh so much more. My guard is still never really down, but I do lower it some. 3. I sleep better I still only need five or six hours of sleep. That’s just who I’ve always been. The sleep is more restful now, though. I don’t awaken feeling tired. The bags under my eyes have gone away. My eyelids don’t get heavy, and I don’t drink five cups of coffee a day anymore to stay alert. Even when I find a reason to stay awake through the night, I don’t really need an extra kick to make that happen.   It is amazing what good sleep will do for you. 4. No one spits in my food It’s not even a concern. I don’t think about it. I don’t worry about it. I treat food service workers with respect and give them no reason to dislike or hate me. Even if they are anti-police, I’m in a new state where no one knows me. I am an anonymous face, and I don’t wear a flashy uniform that invites people to hate me just because of it. I don’t even check my food for spit anymore! How crazy is that? 5. Excitement is extremely hard to come by After twelve years in law enforcement, I’ve seen and done some crazy things. You guys know what I’m talking about. Where most people get their occasional adrenaline dump from someone nearly sideswiping them or witnessing a bar fight, that kind of thing barely makes us raise an eyebrow. It takes something pretty significant to get our blood flowing, and the chances of me getting that now are all but nil. It sort of sucks, to be honest. I guess I’ll have to take up skydiving. 6. There aren’t as many stupid people in the world as I thought there were When you deal primarily with criminals and ne’er-do-wells day in and day out, year in and year out, you begin to think that all of society is stupid. It’s not. Most of the smart people are too busy taking care of their families, putting food on the table, and making a good life for themselves to do dumb things that get the police called. When you stop working with the dregs of society and start rubbing elbows with successful people, you realize that there are a lot of really intelligent people who do really well for themselves out there. This is going to come as a huge shock to you, but good, hardworking, intelligent people outweigh those you routinely deal with by a pretty wide margin. It’s not even close. 7. The pull of brotherhood is strong I don’t talk to the guys as much as I’d like to talk to them. It’s not their fault. I don’t call them as much as I should. Even when we do talk, it isn’t the same. “How’s the weather in Arizona?” isn’t nearly as fun a question to answer as “Did that guy really literally shit his pants when you hooked him?” The men and women I worked with and I formed bonds of blood, sweat, and tears. We were tested in ways most people aren’t. We fought together, against the criminals, the outside world, and certain segments of the department (cough *admin* cough). When it seemed that everyone hated us, we still had each other. There is nothing like that connection in the civilized world. The thin blue line is a real and powerful thing. I miss it. All in all, I’ve enjoyed my time away. I’ve had some new adventures, read a good book or two (not really, but I’ve really done some damage on Netflix), and convinced a wonderfully beautiful woman to be my wife. I’ve made new friends that I’m sure will be friends for life. My batteries are recharged, and if I decide to go back, I’ll be better because of it. If I don’t, I’ll have memories few people have, and I’ll always have a story to tell. I don’t regret a minute of being a cop, but I’m not devastated about not being one either. I honestly don’t know which path I’ll choose, but I’ll be okay either way, which is a really good thing to know. For those of you out there on watch while I’m away, try to be safe, but if you cannot be safe, win.