Today's guest is Chris Cosgriff, Police Captain and founder

of the Officer Down Memorial Page.

At just 19 as a college freshman.

Chris launched ODMP from his dorm room.

Nearly three decades later, it's become the nation's leading digital

memorial, honoring fallen officers and keeping their stories alive.

In this episode, you'll hear how a single idea grew into a movement, the impact

it's had on families and communities, and how Chris continues to serve on the

front lines of Law Enforcement today.

Here's the full story of Chris and the officer's down Memorial Page.

19-year-old Chris Cosgriff, okay, college

student at James Mason Freshman.

Most kids in his position would be running away from the police or avoiding

the police or complaining about the police or protesting the damn police.

And here's Chris, 19-year-old Chris, taking a whole different route.

That really impressed me that sent a message 'cause that was so.

Uh, different than what most college kids that I knew, including my own

kids were doing at 19 years of age.

So, might be interesting to start there at the beginning.

This was back in 96, I believe.

Yep.

At James Mason University.

James Madison.

James Madison.

Not Mason.

Madison.

Yeah.

And I got my Madisons and Masons.

Yeah.

But.

Uh, 1996.

Tell us, tell our audience what you did that, by the way, folks is still

alive and well and prospering today.

Welcome to the podcast, Chris.

Oh, great.

Well, thank you.

Uh, yeah, so, uh, January, 1996, I was a freshman, James

Madison University in Virginia.

And,

I. Just finishing up, uh, a time when I was in, in high school, just, uh,

getting interested in, technology, the internet back in the day that

was dial up AOL and, and all that.

And, um, you know, I entered school in a technology program that the, it

was a brand new degree program, called Integrated Science and Technology,

which sort of was like a hybrid, between computer science and business.

Right?

That's the best way to describe it.

It's evolved since then, but at the time, that's sort of what it was.

And so freshman year I started learning how to, make webpages

learning HTML, and j, just the basics.

And I, I was, backing it up a little bit.

In high school, I had been, uh, an explorer for the Fairfax City Police

Department in, in Northern Virginia.

It's a small department.

At the time it was.

Probably 60 officers or so.

And, um, you know, I told the, the explorer advisors, my only my dream in

life is to become a cop and you know, I'm gonna be a cop here in Fairfax City.

you know, and I, I don't know what time I'm gonna do until I'm 21, when

I can't, you know, when I can go to the academy and my ex, my advisors,

you know, I, you know, I don't.

whatever their motive, they're like, no, don't become a cop.

Go to college and learn technology and get a degree and go do, make a lot more money.

Right.

I'm like, I'll show them Oh, about the money, right?

Like, I'll show them.

Ha ha ha.

And so, so fast forward back to January 96.

I've learned a little bit of HTML learning how to do webpage, and this was, um, I

think just a year earlier, Craig, you can correct me if I'm wrong, around 94,

95 was the dedication of the memorial.

Um, and when I was

1991.

Yeah, so when I was an explorer, I had actually participated

in that dedication and the walk from the capitol to the memorial, and I

got one of those slides that I still have actually in my office here I

have, displayed that, that flashlight from the memorial dedication.

And so that, you know, as an explorer touched a little bit about, fallen

officers and stuff, but it wasn't really on my mind until January of 96.

And so I, I still get a little emotional talking about it, but that's

sort of, you know, it's, it's made a big impact on my life ever since.

And that was when, um, there was a newspaper article on the Washington

Post about Terrence Johnson, who murdered, uh, officer Albert Claggett

and Officer James Swart from in Prince George's County, Maryland.

Mm-hmm.

Um, those murders happened in 1978, but he was just being released from prison.

Wow.

And the, the, the Washington Post did this big expose on him, and

I just didn't think it was right.

And so, my connection to Law Enforcement, my connection to like,

knowing that the memorial was, had just been dedicated a few years earlier,

I was like, well, what can I do?

I'm just a college kid.

I know.

HTML.

There was no website for the memorial.

And so I just was like, well, I can create a memorial for these

officers on, on, on the internet.

Right?

around that same time, just within a few days of this article, Officer

Lori Vaird in Philadelphia was murdered, responding to a bank robbery.

She got in the Washington Post, like three sentences where

Terrence Johnson gets this whole.

Metro section, front page spread.

And I was like, that, you know, that's, not right.

So I sat down and, and she was the, the first memorial created and within

a few days, uh, Brian Peney in Fort Lauderdale, Florida was murdered.

He was one of the, the second or third memorial created.

Remember that.

His twin brother, just a few days after that, emails me saying,

"Hey, thank you for this memorial. It really means a lot." And, um.

That's when it hit me how important this was.

And so from that day forward, I vowed like, I'll always be

involved, I'll always do this.

And it, it just sort of really caught.

Caught, um, momentum after that.

And it's, you know, uh, at one point I would, I would argue was the most visited

Law Enforcement website in the world.

Right.

For a number of years.

And Chris and Chris, let's chime in and that website that

you're talking about is the ODMP, the Officer Down Memorial Page.

Yeah.

Thank you Bill.

And you are the founder of the Officer Down Memorial Page

of which today is one of the most prominent sites to go and, uh, research

and find and honor, uh, officers that have fallen in the line of duty.

And you are that man that created that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Right.

And, and, uh, you're, you're right, it is the Officer Down Memorial Page and,

you know, I refer to it and I think most people refer to it as ODMP and,

You, you know, this, these days, it gets about 4 or 5 million visitors a year.

you know, we, we have the, the website, the mobile app, email notifications,

plus a series of events that help support the organization and some of the other

initiatives that, ODMP supports as well.

So, this upcoming January will be the 30 year anniversary.

you know, looking back over these 30 years has, wow, been quite a, ride.

Um, I, I stepped down last September as the executive director, after 29 years.

And, um, I'm still on the board of directors and I'm still involved, but, the

day-to-day operations, it was, like giving up a child, but I, I did step back and,

and why did you do that, Chris?

Why did you do that?

Uh, well, so.

about 12 years ago or 13 years ago, I decided, you know what

I'm, after I graduated college, I ended up not being a cop.

I took the advisor's, uh, advice and I went into the IT field, but I maintained

my work with ODMP on the side as a, essentially as a hobby, on the side.

And, um, got older and older and then I was in my mid thirties and

I thought, you know what, if I don't do it now, I'll never do it.

So I applied at one, one department and that was not the Fairfax City

Police Department, it was the Fairfax County Police Department.

I got hired and at, at 35 years old, went through the academy and, that was in 2013,

um, last year I was promoted to captain.

And, you know, with the increased responsibility and expectations

here, I just, after 29 years, can no longer balance a full-time job at

work and a full-time job with ODMP.

And so, you know, it was time to hand over the reins and, um.

That, that's why, that's why I'm no longer the executive

director, but I am still involved.

But, great.

So, before, before, uh, Craig, before you jump in, I, I want to

ask one more question and let, let Craig take it from here.

Uh, because this kind of goes into what you just said about, uh.

You applied and you got hired.

What were the dynamics at that point in time?

So you're 35 years old, everybody probably knows about the ODMP website.

They know of you and about you.

So how was that going into the job?

Uh, you know, the, the interaction with, with folks there, how was

that a po a, a real positive?

Was it, you know, something that was.

Different.

Yeah.

I mean the people in Law Enforcement, in the agencies knew, uh, you know, I would

argue I was treated no differently than any other applicant and any other recruit.

Um, you know, the hiring process took the same six to nine months to a year.

Is anyone else applying?

you know, the, the, my Academy classmates, didn't know for

the first few days about it.

Um, however, at at one point, uh, you know, because our

academy, like most academies throughout the country, use ODMP.

As a teaching tool.

Right.

Um, you know, so, uh, every single day in our academy class, if there was a

line of duty death, one of the recruits would have to come up and write it

on the board and read the memorial.

And I know, you know, different academies do different things, but,

it would be rare for an academy not to somehow incorporate information

from ODMP into their, curriculum.

Interesting.

And so it was, it was very, very soon

after we started where, um.

The sergeant in charge of the academy, uh, you know, there was a line of duty death.

So he asked every, you know, the, the class as a whole.

Does anyone know about Officer Down Memorial Page?

Uh, of course I'm the only one who raised my hand and, uh, he, um,

you know, put me on the spot to, to explain what it was, and, and ex And

then he asked me, he knew who I was.

He asked me, you know, how do you know about it?

And I had to go into that whole thing.

So he was just putting me like, you know, on the spot.

But, um.

But again, throughout the, you know, the rest of the academy I was.

The third oldest person in the, in the class of about 50 or 60 people.

but, you know, I was treated no differently passed.

I had to meet the same requirements as everyone else.

And, um, I, I held my head high and, uh, I was honored actually in my graduation.

Craig Floyd here was the, the guest speaker, which, was awesome, you know,

because he and I had had a relationship for many, many years through.

His work with the National Memorial and my work with ODMP and you know,

we've become friends and it was, it was just, it was wonderful to see

him there and have him either guest speaker, which was coincidence.

I had no idea until, because they don't tell us anything about the graduation.

You set that up.

That was a setup right?

Hey, before we go, Chris, great story here, but I'm, I'm Craig.

I know you have a lot of questions, but let me just remind everybody this

podcast, heroes Behind the Badge is brought to you by Citizens Behind the

Badge, the leading voice of the American people in support of the men women of

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If you like what Chris is talking about today.

If you like this podcast, will you do us a favor, hit subscribe.

Hit like hit follow.

Okay.

That way when we release new episodes, you will be on the inside.

You'll get first notice of a new episode, and we release new

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Citizens behind the badge.org.

Craig Floyd, our founder, the Chairman Emeritus of the National

Law Enforcement Memorial.

Uh, I don't have to introduce him to you, Chris, and uh, I think

Craig has got some great questions.

You guys have known each other for years and I can't wait to hear the conversation.

You two have Craig take it away.

This is a real honor because Chris and I, uh, I have

lost touch over the last few years.

Uh, I've left the Memorial fund and, uh, he is busy protecting me and my family.

I live in Fairfax County, Virginia.

So Chris is, uh, my protector along with, I don't know what, uh, 1200 or

so other officers at Fairfax County.

So, um, I'm very privileged to have, uh, one of my protectors with us today.

I wanna do a couple things.

One, I want to go back to the incident that you, uh, alluded to that kind of

inspired you to create ODMP, and that was the murder of Albert Claggett and Brian

Swart , um, from Prince George's County.

Uh, I don't know if we, um, uh, got into enough of the details,

but I wanted our audience to know.

These are two Prince George's County police officers here in Maryland,

just outside of Washington, DC.

It occurred in 1978, the incident where they were both murdered

by Terrence Johnson at the time.

He was 15 years old.

He and his brother were arrested that day for rifling through, uh,

the coin, machines at a laundromat, a fairly minor crime you would think.

Right?

They take him into the station.

They fingerprint him, and as they're fingerprinting him, uh,

Albert Claggett, uh, is in a struggle with Terrence Johnson.

Johnson grabs his gun shoots and kills Albert Claggett.

And Brian Swart, who, uh, hears the commotion and the struggle,

tries to come to the rescue and he is also shot and killed.

Killed by this 15-year-old, theft suspect.

Uh, he goes to trial.

He's, uh, convicted of manslaughter for  Claggett's murder.

and, um, he was, uh, not guilty by reason of insanity for murdering Brian Swart

. So a lot of controversy, obviously behind that incident and the murder

and the subsequent conviction.

He was sentenced to 25 years in jail, but was released early

in 1995 and two years later.

Obviously there was a lot of controversy around his early release.

The police community was in, uh, an uproar, as was the community.

Uh, and two years after his release, uh, he and his brother once again, were

caught robbing a bank and be as police closed in, um,  Terrence the murderer,

the cop killer, died by suicide.

Um, so that's the story.

It, it's rather, you know, very troubling of course, but this is the incident

that inspired, uh, the Officer Down Memorial Page and Chris Cosgriff to

do what he did as a college student.

I couldn't be prouder, of anyone for doing what he did to honor our

fallen heroes and Law Enforcement.

And, and I should point out that, uh, over the years Chris and I

have worked very closely together.

Uh, me with the.

Memorial Fund and Chris with ODMP.

And, and we had a, I think, uh, Chris, and you can comment on this, a very

collaborative type of relationship.

He would visit our office often, and he would, and his volunteer leaders, uh, with

ODMP would, scour the, uh, libraries and internet and anything they could find to

find older deaths, line of duty deaths in Law Enforcement that had not been found.

And Chris, tell, tell me about, uh, tell our audience about the work you

did in finding these older deaths.

Um, uh, the Memorial Fund was pretty good at it, but you, you gave, uh, quite

a bit of boost to our efforts in UNC covering these older historical deaths.

Sure.

Yeah.

So, history has always been interesting to me, and, and when we're talking about

memorializing officers, you know, when, when we, when I started ODMP in 96, it

was easy, uh, relatively easy of course to be, to learn of modern day deaths.

And, you would think.

These days, everything is instant.

On the, on social media.

Everyone knows about almost every single death in 96, that wasn't the case.

So even modern day death sometimes you didn't hear about it until a year later.

but I don't know, it's probably closer to 19, uh, 97, probably a year or two into my

work with ODMP where we, where I started going backwards in time and, and that.

initially was a result of, two things.

One is that I knew that the memorial had historic, had honored historic

officers and we wanted to be able to tell those stories as well.

Um, but also we started as ODMP got a following.

We would hear from survivors of, fallen officers from a few years ago

or from, 50 years ago or something.

You know, even further and saying, Hey, my grandfather was killed

a line of duty or this per, this officer in my town was killed in the

line, line of duty in 18 hundreds.

Can you honor them as well?

And so it took a little effort.

my.

College.

One of my college roommates was a computer science major who is an

absolute genius, uh, when it came to databases and coding and stuff.

His, his name is Mike Schutz.

that, that's important because when we incorporated ODMP as a nonprofit, he

was one of our first board members also.

And so, Fast forward a few years, he became my brother-in-law.

um, so it, it, you know, keep it in the family I guess.

But, uh, so we, we started developing, the first database

and we started going back in time.

And so then I had to decide, okay, well we want, you know, all these

visitors are submitting these officers.

I would, I had the, the master name list of fallen officers from the

National Memorial, and I would see that.

There were officers missing, we were getting names of officers who, the, who

the National Memorial didn't know about.

And to me that was perplexing.

I was like, well, they must know everything right at this time.

but very quickly we learned that there were,

countless officers who forgotten through time.

and that's not through negligence.

It's not through any reason other than it, it wasn't a

priority, to memorialize officers.

N then that the way, the same way it is now.

so I would start going to the, to my local library and get like looking at

microfilm from, uh, older newspapers.

And we would get it through interlibrary alone.

I would get a, a microfilm from California or something through interlibrary alone

and I would start researching an officer.

And inevitably there might be another article about another

officer in that same paper.

And so.

over the last 30 years, I, I've never kept track of the number of

officers I've discovered, because to me, I, once I discover 'em or, you

know, and honor them on the, on the website, I move on to the next one.

Um, but I, I would have to estimate it's probably somewhere in the two to 3000

officer range that, that I have personally discovered, killed on a line of duty.

The, the earliest one.

Uh, it was actually just about two years ago.

I'm still doing research.

He, he died in 1813 and he was a customs officer up in,

Connecticut or, or Rhode Island.

Um, so it's still, it's still one of those things I enjoy doing when I

have the little bit of, uh, free time.

I ha I do have, it's a lot easier now with all the online.

Resources, so many newspapers are digitized.

and, you know, so many other people are out there doing research and

submitting maybe like one little clue.

And, and then our team of researchers and, and myself can go out and, and

really dig into it and get all of the records that are necessary to

confirm it as a line of duty, death.

It's amazing and Chris, I, I, I'd be interested if you feel the same

way, but I, I know when we, uh, dedicated the National Law Enforcement Officers

Memorial, there were 12,561 names.

Today there's over 24,000 and about.

I'd say half of the new edition, since we dedicated the memorial in 1991 were these

older deaths that you're referring to, um, deaths that had not been discovered

when we dedicated the National Memorial.

In fact, that was one of our challenges that we, we started from scratch, more

or less in terms of trying to identify fallen officers so we could put their

names on the National Memorial, and the only source we had was the FBI.

They had, uh, kept track of Law Enforcement fatalities

dating back to 1961.

and so we, we were on our own in terms of finding any deaths prior

to 1961 and, and even deaths they had forgotten about since 1961.

and you did the same thing, you and the Memorial fund.

Um, we together, uh, did a lot of research and we had a lot of volunteers helping us.

I know you did too, but.

What a great feeling it is, uh, for me because the tragedy, the, the dark

part of the story is so far removed.

Uh, the family members who were deeply affected when that officer died, to find

an older death, a death that occurred a hundred, 200 years ago, 50 years ago.

To me that that's one of the more satisfying parts of working at the

Memorial Fund, and I'd be interested how you feel, uh, at ODMP, I mean, I

know you're big on the, the recently fallen officers and making sure those

announcements get out quickly, but how about finding these older desks?

What a great feeling that is, right?

Yeah.

I I share your, share your sentiment.

Exactly.

You know, one of the things for me is that.

If these officers had been remembered, they would already

be on the memorial, right?

So the fact that they have been forgotten through time,

at one point,

their, towns, their cities honored them when they fell or

were killed in line of duty.

but especially in rural areas, there's no ongoing.

Memorial for them or anything.

And so, it's, great to, to pull that outta history, find the story piece

together, their, their biography piece together, the events that uh, led to

their death and then in a, in many cases, especially the historic ones, uh,

where maybe the, the person responsible for a murder, went on the lam and

wasn't arrested for a year or two.

And like following that story through, through the manhunt and through the.

Through potentially a court disposition and pulling all that back together and,

and packaging it up into one memorial so people can read it and memor.

And remember these people, you know now that they're memorialized on

ODMP and their names are engraved in the National Memorial, their

names are never forgotten again.

They will always be available for every Law Enforcement officer for descendants

who had no idea they were even related.

we've reached, I've done discoveries and then reached out to people

through genealogy websites who had no idea that their their ancestor was

an officer killed in line of duty.

Um, so it's great to make these connections to, to bring these officers

essentially back to life through history and tell those stories and it is, it's

like for you, I share that it's, it's extremely satisfying and, you know, I'm

humbled to be able to be part of that.

I wanna change a great partnership because, um, just a, a final

comment that, ODMP and the, at the outset in 1996 and for many years was the only

source really for recently fallen deaths.

Right?

The only ones, anyway, that was announcing it to the public.

Somewhere where police officers could go to find out, if someone

died in their profession recently and maybe they wanted to attend the

funeral or at least express a, a condolance to the department involved.

Uh, while the Memorial Fund was, uh, more interested in the long-term honoring

of those officers, uh, we had a vetting process that was, uh, very, involved, uh,

where we'd get all the details about an officer's death and then actually have

a committee to review each case, make sure they met our criteria before the

names would go on the National Memorial.

And meanwhile, ODMP was putting out the early reports, uh,

of those, uh, fatalities.

So it was.

A great, uh, I think partnership, uh, that lasted for many, many years.

And, uh, which I, I just, before I turn things back to Bill, the criteria that

you use on ODMP to put an officer on the memorial, I think our audience would be

interested knowing who's eligible and, um, and how you go through that process.

Sure.

Yeah.

So our, so our criteria, no surprise is, was influenced heavily by the National

Memorial Criteria, a as well as the Public Safety Officer Benefits Program.

So it's sort of a, an amalgamation of that.

you know, we, we try to be as inclusive as possible, but at the core of it,

you have to be a Law Enforcement officer with the power of arrest.

Uh, with few exceptions, and those exceptions would be, probably

along the lines of, corrections and detention officers who have

responsibility as supervision of inmates.

'cause you know, many of those, you know, those in our industry know that there's

a different certification process, uh, between a fully sworn Law Enforcement

officer of arrest and, and say detention or corrections officers in some areas.

They have to be killed or die in the line of duty, or, you know, as a direct

result of a line of duty incident.

So the, the obvious ones would be, felonious attacks on them,

gunshots, stabbings, physical assaults, vehicle crashes, uh,

you know, other types of crashes, motorcycles, airplanes, boats, you.

Accidents, right?

Someone, an officer falls down a set of stairs or off of a

wall or something like that.

Um, and then, then you get into like the ones that are honored more recently, which

would be like the heart attacks or medical related things that have a nexus to, to

their work as a Law Enforcement officer.

And so, and Craig, you probably remember this too, and you know, one

of the things when we started honoring heart attacks and started honoring,

Uh, say like strokes or aneurysms and, and things along those lines.

We actually got pushback from, uh, I'll call 'em old timers in Law

Enforcement where there was a stigma where if you were not shot and killed

in the line of duty, it didn't matter.

It wasn't a line of duty death to to certain parts of the

Law Enforcement community.

And so.

One of the things that I established early on at ODMP is that every line of

duty, death, we treat exactly the same.

So whether it's a gunshot, whether it's a car crash, whether it's a heart attack,

whether it's a, a drowning, we treat every single memorial the same, the, they are

all formatted the same, the same type of information is on there, the same level

of detail, that photographs, everything.

and so we take a lot of pride in that and, and.

You know, the, the development of these memorials over time, um, goes

to honor that criteria and, and not really look for reasons to expand it.

We, have over time, but to treat every line of duty, death as the same.

And so COVID was a bit another example of a, um, big shift in.

What is a line of duty death.

Right.

And so, uh, again, not surprisingly, and I know the National Memorial went

through this too, is that when we started, started off honoring officers

who died, that we could show definitively or Presump presumptively died of COVID

that contracted the line of duty.

Uh, we had a big pushback from that.

and, um, you know, we.

We stuck with it.

We treated them all the same.

And um, you know, I think people eventually came around and realized

that this was a significant issue.

I.

So I want to jump in and just talk about Chris

a little bit and go way back.

So, uh, when Chris and I were both significantly younger and, and we'd

be there for National Police Week in Washington, DC and you and I are running

around going to all the events and doing things, but, uh, you and Craig had a, a,

uh kind of parallel synergy at that point, because both of you were probably some of

the best known people in Law Enforcement, that weren't Law Enforcement and that

was, uh, and, and, and then now you've, obviously, you've moved on and you're a

police captain now and all, but, uh, one of the things I remember the most about

us running around in Washington DC was, uh, your 5K run the officer down memorial.

5K Run.

Why don't you talk about that and how that, who did that benefit and

how did that, that all come together?

Sure.

So, so it's, um, the, the, a lot of people call it the ODMP 5K, but it's actually

the National Police Week 5K, uh, formally.

And so, um, I will.

The upfront, that was not my brainchild.

We actually inherited that event from, an FBI agent who had started it.

Um, and through, his own busy life was unable to keep it going,

and, uh, reached out to us to see if we wanted to collaborate

and, and eventually take it over.

And so we actually took it over probably in year three or four of him.

Uh, operating this.

And, and we very quickly realized that it was around the same time where we, the

ODMP was going through a transition of all volunteer to actually having a staff.

And so, as part of that, of course you need funding.

and so.

Uh, when we took over the National Police Week 5K, we, we turned

it into a sort of a hybrid.

there were two benefactors, from the funds of it.

It was, uh, US and it was also concerns of police survivors, uh, which is

another absolutely amazing organization.

And one close to my heart, and I know close to all of your hearts here.

Um, and I coincidentally cops.

The creation of cops was also as a result of Officer Cleggett and Officer Schwartz

murder in Prince George's County as well.

So, so the national police speak 5K.

It's, pro coming up on 20 year anniversary of that, I would imagine.

and we, you know, at the time we would take over downtown DC uh, during

police week and it would start and end right at the National Memorial.

Shut down the streets, it would run right by the US Capitol and it

would end, start, and end again.

Right.

Literally at the National Law Enforcement Officer's Memorial, which, uh, had a a.

Super significant meaning to, to everyone in attendance.

can everybody, and we, it grew from when we took it over, there were just a few

hundred people who ran it to, I think our, the, highest we had was right before

COVID was about 3000, uh, participants from, from around the country and around

the world, uh, would run that event.

And so we've, we took the opportunity to create a virtual event so people

in other countries could run it in conjunction with the actual event.

Um, and just, uh, last year we started a. We call it the halfway to the 5K event,

which is actually at the six month mark.

So, and it's only half of a 5K and it's a completely virtual event.

So we're trying to keep the momentum going throughout the year with this.

And, and the ultimate goal, again, it's, it's, uh, it's a fundraising event for

us so we can pay our staff and it's also, an event to bring awareness and

allow the community and, and officers to run in memory of the fallen officers.

So, Chris, how can people find out more about that?

So you can go to the to the ODMP website, ODMP.org.

or you can also go to the National Police Week, uh, 5K website, which

is nationalpoliceweek5k.org..

So talk about the evolution of ODMP, how many staff, where you

headquartered, what's going on these days?

What's next?

So, so the evolution, you know, it started in my dorm room on the eighth floor of

Eagle Hall in Harrisonburg, Virginia, uh, running off of a school web server

so that the very first version of it was jmu.edu/ODMP or something like that.

You know, and, and today we are, you know, the headquarters is in Fairfax, Virginia.

It's, it's near the, uh, our historic courthouse in the county.

Um, there's a staff of six people in the office, and then we have some remote,

software developers who help us as well.

and so.

Uh, you know, it's, it's a full-time operation and, uh,

it's almost a 24 7 operation.

Uh, you know, as far as the line of duty death notifications, you know,

whether that happens on a weekend, a holiday at night, uh, as soon as we

know about it, someone jumps on it to get that notification sent out.

Wow.

Chris, on that, I have a, um, I, I guess I signed up years ago when I

first met you, and I don't even remember how I signed up, but all I know is.

Every time there is, God forbid, another officer death on duty.

Death.

And also, I noticed you mentioned people who are about to get on parole.

Okay.

that you highlight, Hey, so and so was convicted, blah, blah, blah,

and thereabout, they're a year or so away from getting out on parole.

Okay.

How could our listeners, our viewers get if they're not already

getting the o uh, your, your, um.

You know, your alerts, how can they get that and tell us a little

bit more about the parole part.

How did that become part of your service?

Sure.

So, so to get the alerts, uh, you go to ODMP.org, and or just Google, ODMP.

It'll be the first result.

And there's an option to subscribe to email notifications.

Uh, you can, you can do it, uh, by creating an ODMP account, or you can

just subscribe with your email address.

You can also, if you Google or, uh, if you go to either the, iTunes store or

Google Play Store, you can just search ODMP and download the mobile app.

Um, and we do notifications through the mobile app as well.

the, what was the second part of your question?

the, I start seeing, I started seeing notices about people.

Yeah.

No parole for cop killer.

So, so that's one of the programs,

just memorializing officers wasn't enough for us.

And so we wanted to make sure that justice was done also, because one of

the most infuriating things, for me, I, and in fact the reason I started ODMP was

because a cop killer was being released.

Right?

And it, and it frankly pissed me off.

Um, so.

One of the things that the organization did was to create a program to, uh,

empower people within the community, Law Enforcement, uh, citizens alike,

to be notified when a cop killer was coming up for parole and they could

in turn, provide, uh, send a letter to the parole board, basically encouraging

them to not, uh, grant parole to to the.

Inmate.

so it's been a very successful program.

Um, we've had, hundreds of, over the course of the program's life, hundreds

of, potential pearls coming up, and the vast majority, uh, have been denied.

we have heard back feedback from.

family members, uh, you know, survivors of the, the officer victims who said

that the letters certainly helped and really were, you know, tipped the scale

to ensure that they were kept locked

up.

Yeah, that's great.

I mean, obviously honoring the fallen officers is, was the

main mission, but I really.

Enjoyed, I shouldn't say enjoyed.

I guess I was happy to get those alerts that somebody is

paying attention to this stuff.

Yeah.

You know, somebody's watching this and not just letting these guys go free.

I mean, I mean, I guess probably on this call, all of us would

probably like to see no parole for, uh, anybody who kills a cop.

Unfortunately, that's not how.

The entire United States thinks.

But yeah, we keep trying and you are leading the charge, so yeah.

Good for you, bill And uh, Craig, other questions for Chris?

This has been very informative.

I thought I knew a little bit about ODMP, but I didn't know

as much as I should have done.

I appreciate you coming on today.

And one, one

last thing I had Chris, is, even before the internet has

expanded, I mean now we have ai.

So you can ask questions all the time and was there a cop kill, uh, killed today?

You know, whatever, and you get the answer immediately and you

might even see a photoCosgriff.

But you guys started doing that in 1996 forward.

I'm just amazed at how your volunteer network must be massive.

I mean, you must have been getting alerts from people all over the country saying,

Hey, we just had a cop killed in my city today, and here's the information.

I mean, how many volunteers have you relied on at ODMP over the years?

Oh, countless.

Countless.

and.

they've, many of them have become close friends.

Many of them are people who just co you know, occasionally

Will, will send something.

but, or, you know, especially early on, we relied heavily on exactly what you

described, which was someone in, you know, some, some little town and in the

Midwest where, uh, an officer was killed in that town or the next town over and

they heard about it on their local news and they, they contact us to let us know.

Right.

whereas.

Through normal channels.

Something that happened in Kansas would never make it to Virginia,

uh, without the, these volunteers.

And so we would get that information, we would go and, and source it.

We would call agencies.

We would use, you know, local news websites and or whatever we had

to do to, to verify the details.

More volunteers.

And

we would, you know, create the memorials.

Uh, after that.

That's interesting that, um, and you alluded to it earlier,

that most of the time when a cop is killed in America, it, it doesn't get

a lot of national attention, if at all.

Uh, I know, uh, when I open up the Washington Post every morning, I, I would

expect to see at least a blurb, if not a whole article about an officer who

might have been killed in the line of duty at some other part of the country.

But that's not really the case.

As you point out, unless you have people in that part of the country,

in that community where that officer died, most of us, uh, in the rest of

the country aren't gonna know about it.

But thanks to ODMP, we did learn about those deaths quickly.

and ultimately their names did go on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial

so that they're remembered, forever.

Um, we will never forget, uh, the Law Enforcement heroes who have given their

life for this country, at the memorial at ODMP, and hopefully, as you pointed

out, uh, because there are more memorials all over the country now in states and

localities, um, these officers are getting their due honor and their due remembrance.

So I hope that continues, but let me conclude my comments today

by saying I'm very proud of you.

Very.

uh, it couldn't be.

more pleased with the work you've done over many, many years to honor

the fallen Law Enforcement heroes of our country, and I'm proud to

be a partner of yours and a friend.

Um, so thank you sir.

And thank you for coming on our, uh, show today.

This has, uh, been, I know our audience knows, you, knows ODMP,

but now they know the whole story.

Yeah.

Well, I, I appreciate it and it's an honor.

It's great to reconnect and with, with all of you and to, uh, be able to tell

the story and I, you know, it's just, 45 minutes or an hour is not enough.

It doesn't do it justice.

But, you know, I'll, I'll leave with this.

You know, Bill asked about um, the evolution of ODMP.

Um, you know, from 96 until today, we've gone through several iterations of, uh,

website design and the infrastructure.

it was supposed to launch this summer, uh, where it got a little

bit delayed, but hopefully within the next two weeks, Fingers crossed,

uh, we'll have a completely new ODMP experience, a complete redesign.

Again, that will really empower, uh, our visitors to go in depth into

the stories and to find data and to do analysis into line of duty,

deaths, trends, patterns, and uh, um.

You know, more information about it.

So keep your eyes out for that.

That should hopefully, fingers crossed in the next two, two or three weeks be out.

And you mentioned, uh, earlier that you

are a charitable organization.

I assume you're a registered 5 0 1 C3, is that Yes,

we are.

Yep.

Tell the listeners, the viewers, how can they get involved?

Because obviously you have a staff, you have a mission, and it needs

funding, and part of that funding comes from the public, right?

Yeah, it does.

visiting our website, there's, there's ways to volunteer, there's

ways to participate in our events.

The National Police Week 5K.

We have a, a motorcycle ride called the Officer Down Memorial Ride.

Um, and you can also donate through there.

It's a tax deductible donation in all 50 states.

and there, there you can donate right online.

Um, and then we also have the ODMP store, which is ODMP, branded

merchandise to that has, you know, memorializes fallen officers and

also supports the organization, through the proceeds of the sales.

That's great.

how can we thank you.

I mean, you have created a digital monument, actually a digital

monument that will forever declare that honor is not optional.

forgetting.

It is not acceptable and it's the core of your culture.

It's the core of our culture at Citizens Behind the Badge.

It's, it's so nice to talk to someone of a like mind and ob.

Obviously, you and Craig have worked together for years.

For the same mission, to never forget the people who have made the

ultimate sacrifice for all of us.

Chris, thanks for being on Heroes Behind the Badge.

Uh, you've got a great story.

remind them, uh, our listeners once again and our viewers,

what is your website please?

you go to ODMP.org.

So stands for Officer Down Memorial Page, or, uh, search for ODMP

in, iTunes or Google Play Store.

Great.

and great job, Chris.

Yeah, thanks.

Great job.

Thank you, sir. I just wanna remind our viewers and our listeners,

this is Heroes Behind the Badge.

Today's hero was Chris Cosgriff, and you, if you didn't hear the whole

podcast, go back and start over.

It's a great story.

It's a great story.

remember this podcast, heroes Behind the Badge is brought to you

by Citizens behind the badge.org.

Citizens Behind the Badge is the leading voice of the American people in support

of the men and women of Law Enforcement.

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When the next episode comes out.

Okay.

Again, Chris, thanks again.

We appreciate you.

We appreciate your story.

That'll do it for this episode of Heroes Behind the Badge.