John Pfaehler, a law enforcement wellness advocate, is an officer of the Rockville Police Department currently on long-term leave in order to work on a suicide prevention program for police officers. Badge of Life estimates that two to three times more officers kill themselves than are directly killed by others, a subset of those who die in the line of duty. More broadly, Badge of Life promotes psychological survival for police officers.

John described his current work, which includes setting up a new organization, Healing the Blue LLC, which has a new website, https://www.healingthebluellc.com/. The site provides services for police officers including training, wellness programs and access to social media resources for police agencies.

The manager and investigative programs administrator of Montgomery County’s Office of Consumer Protection, Tracy gave us a fast-moving and informative talk about cybersecurity and identity theft. She said that identity thefts are raking in millions of dollars from various tricks played on unsuspecting citizens. In particular, she mentioned email frauds (with links from email messages), and telephone scams. She said to maintain strict control of your social security number, to never click on emails from unknown sources and to avoid downloads of “free” offers and interactive Facebook surveys.
6

The former head of Human Resources for the World Bank, Richard Stern has embarked on a new career directing the Partnership for Transparency, a nongovernmental organization that specializes in helping communities root out corruption. Richard described several projects that have been sponsored by PFT, including rooting out corruption in the school system of the Philippine Islands, improving local governments in Africa, and other locations in developing countries.