As 20-year-old police recruit John West eyed the fence, window and sandbag dummy in the obstacle course before him, he thought in the back of his mind about what was coming next. The mile-and-a-half run at the end of the police physical-fitness test lurked like a cougar in the brush, waiting to sap his strength. “I just need to pace myself,” he said. West, a Piedmont resident and former defensive end in high school, had passed three portions of the physical test a few weeks ago, but ran out of time on the run.
Thursday, after running almost daily for the past two weeks, he passed each part of the test, including finishing the run with almost 30 seconds to spare. “This is big for me,” he said. “I've been waiting for this for a long time.” When a new recruit passes the requirements, it's big for the Anniston Police Department, too. If West passes the background check and interview, he will join the department's ranks. Eleven officers short, with at least one more retiring in the next few months, the department can't find enough qualified people to fill the vacancies, according to Chief John Dryden. “Any bodies are going to help,” said Toby Falk, the Anniston Police Training and Inspections Supervisor. “It helps us fill shifts, answer calls, and it keeps the officers safe. The more officers we have, the faster we will be able to respond to calls.” The other two recruits scheduled to take the test with West never showed up and didn't call Falk with excuses. “That's how it is,” Falk said. The department is not alone in its struggle to find qualified officers. Across the country, law-enforcement agencies find themselves competing with the military and the private sector for men and women to fill their ranks. Some states and agencies are bending standards that say who is fit to serve and protect. Alabama is not lowering its standards, but the state hasn't changed those standards over the last decade and a half while other states have grown more selective about who can become a cop. According to reports from the Associated Press, the New York City Police Department wants to hire 3,000 more officers; Los Angeles is short 1,000; Houston needs 600 and Washington D.C. police administrators say they need 330. Many of the large cities are lowering standards to allow more people into the departments, but Anniston's standards aren't going anywhere, according to Dryden. “I had rather work with somebody who there's no doubt (about) and work shorthanded than send somebody who I have doubts about,” the chief said. Some metropolitan departments are lowering maximum ages, relaxing physical requirements and being more forgiving towards past drug convictions. According to the Associated Press, Boston has raised the maximum age for recruits from 32 to 40. Houston raised its maximum to 44. The Juneau, Alaska, Police Department lowered its physical test requirements from 30 sit-ups in one minute to 15. Oakland, Calif., police no longer disqualify recruits for minor drug convictions, as long as they haven't been convicted in a certain time frame. Most Alabama departments dropped maximum age limits in the mid-1970s. Billy Duckett, director of the Northeast Alabama Law Enforcement Academy in Anniston, said a combination of the war in Iraq and open private-sector jobs in a solid economy have pulled would-be recruits from the ranks. Police salaries rarely stack up against private-sector jobs, he said. Duckett said some big departments have started to offer signing bonuses to lure prospective officers. “Unfortunately in this country the solution to most of the problems is money,” Duckett said. Location can be another draw back to a career in policing. Lt. John Henderson, commander of the state trooper post in Jacksonville, said the Department of Public Safety has corrected a major problem with recruiting troopers. When he went through the academy in 1981, troopers could request to be assigned to certain counties, but often were sent elsewhere in the state. Henderson grew up in Montgomery and requested to be stationed in one of the three counties around the capital city. When he got his assignment, he wasn't thrilled to see he was headed to Talladega County. “That was a bigger drawback than the pay in some cases,” he said. In the last few years, the department has gotten much better at sending troopers to the counties they want, Henderson said. In the most recent class of trooper graduates, Henderson said he believed only one trooper was sent to his third-choice county, with the rest of the class getting their first or second option. But Duckett said there's more to the shortage than pay because people who want to be in law enforcement always have dealt with sub-par pay, strange hours and uncertain assignments. He attributed much of the shortage to the war. Duckett, an ex-Marine, said times are different than when he was in the armed forces in the post-Vietnam 1980s. He served his entire career with only seeing minimal contact with any enemy. Henderson and Duckett said that most of the people who consider a career in law enforcement also consider jobs in the armed forces, either full time or in the National Guard. | ||||
The soldiers getting out of the service now are more likely to have been in combat, and have had their appetites for excitement quenched, Duckett added. “The last thing they want to do is come back and take a job where they're going to get shot at,” Duckett said. He said that since Alabama has such a large National Guard, many departments are short because officers have been called up and deployed overseas. “I would hate to be a chief right now,” Duckett said. Age not always a factor One such military man-turned-cop, who shows you don't have to be young to do the job, is Donald Worrell, who retired from the Marines in July of 2006. A 49-year-old rookie state trooper in Talladega County, Worrell was stationed in Beirut, Lebanon, and in Cyprus in the late 1970s, before many of his fellow patrolmen were born. Despite his age, Worrell said the physical requirements were not really a concern for him. A former marathon runner, Worrell was tested to meet physical standards twice a year in the Marines. Surprisingly, Worrell, who now lives in Lincoln but was born in Bibb County, doesn't even drink coffee to get his half-century-old bones moving in the morning. “Mentally, I don't feel like I'm 49,” Worrell said. He said he is glad there is no age maximum for troopers and said he plans to keep going for years. “As long as my body holds up and I'm not a danger to myself or anyone else,” he said. Henderson said he didn't mind having a few more troopers with a little silver in their hair, especially military veterans. “When you think about the pressure they were under overseas, he ought to be able to handle anything,” said Henderson, who said he is around Worrell's age. He said life experience is the key. A younger trooper may be able to deal with a physical conflict more quickly, but a wiser trooper might be able to avoid it altogether, Henderson said. Worrell agreed, saying that he is old enough and mature enough to realize that an angry motorist who disrespects him probably is lashing out at authority rather than at him. “As a young guy you might not see that,” he said. “They might take it more personal.” Henderson said that while he welcomes older troopers, he expects them to be able to do the same tasks as their younger counterparts. “As you get older, if you don't stay in shape your mind can write checks your body can't cash,” Henderson said. In February, the Alabama Department of Public Safety issued new standards for recruits, broken down by age. According to the new standards, a 20-year-old must be able to do 29 push-ups, but a 60-year-old would only have to do 10. Required run times drop every for 10-year age group, from 15 minutes and 26 seconds for those aged 20-29, to almost 19 minutes for recruits in the 60-and-over category. Dryden said relaxing standards in Anniston would create a liability, both for the police force and the residents it serves. “If somebody's coming to rescue you, do you want someone who is obese?” Dryden asked. Duckett agreed. “Lowering the standards could give you some relief in the short term,” Duckett said. “But lowering the standard, I think, is going to hurt in the long term.” Duckett, who is the chairman for the state's Police Academy Curriculum Committee, said he foresees no changes to the statewide test in the near future. He said Alabama's test is considered easier than the national average for tests, but it has not changed since the early 1990s. At the time it was created, the test was considered average difficulty. At the academy, recruits take a physical test during the session's first week. To pass, recruits must complete an obstacle course in 90 seconds, do 22 push-ups and 25 sit-ups, and run a mile and a half in less than 15 minutes and 28 seconds. Each section of the physical test must be passed consecutively and recruits are only allowed one retest if they fail a portion. Duckett said the standards are “one size fits all,” meaning that gender and age do not matter as long as the recruit can perform up to the physical requirements. “You could be a small petite female and be expected to put a big, drunk pulpwooder in jail same as if you were a college athlete,” he said. Falk said many women have trouble with the push-ups and climbing the fence or wall, while many men fail the sit-ups. “It's the spare tire,” Falk said of the men. “We have a lot of guys that develop their upper bodies but forget the abs.” But the overwhelming majority of the failures for both genders are because of the run. Duckett said the requirements were based on what an independent research firm said police officers need to be able to do, based on the jobs they do every day. “The thing about our business is it goes from very boring to a gun battle in a matter of seconds,” Duckett said. Even if they get past the physical test, recruits at the academy still must pass the first-aid test, firearms qualification, a legal-issues exam and must score at least 70 percent correct on all other written exams. Duckett said the physical test flunks about 10 percent of recruits in the academy, but usually a few are weeded out during the firearms test. Of the 1,000 recruits that Duckett said he had helped certify, none had ever failed the first-aid test, fewer than 10 had failed the legal exam and fewer than five failed the overall academics portion. If there is a recruiting shortage in Alabama, you wouldn't know it by the current class in the academy. Starting with 105 recruits, the class is the biggest the academy has ever seen, Duckett said. Five those recruits dropped out during the fitness portion. Thirteen failed the fitness test on the first try, but eight passed it on the second go-round. While police officers and deputies must pass the academy's requirements to be certified, Falk and Dryden require potential hires to complete the exact same course before anyone signs on the dotted line. Falk said this is done to save money, because the department invests about $3,000 in each new recruit. If the potential officer flunks the test on the first day of the academy, very little of that money comes back to the department. Dryden said officers have no excuse for letting themselves get seriously out of shape. City employees have a free membership to Miller Gym at McClellan. “I think most police and fire guys are health conscious enough to know this job is hard,” Dryden said. “It comes down to life and death sometimes. It's that simple.” |
Monday, June 25, 2007
Thinner blue line: Despite police recruiting difficulties, fitness standards remain unchanged
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment