Sit-ups are out and planks are in – that’s one change to the state’s physical fitness testing for police recruits that was made official Wednesday at the Massachusetts Police Training Committee meeting.
The MPTC oversees police training for the state. This move is one of several due to the high failure rates in physical fitness testing of student officers across the state.
State data showed many recruits were failing the sit-up and running requirements of the test which would prevent them from entering a police academy. This comes at a time when many police departments are facing challenges with recruiting new officers.
The fitness standards are adjusted for age and gender and require potential recruits to do a certain number of sit-ups in a minute and to run a mile and a half in a certain timeframe.
Boston University Police Chief Kelly Nee led the working group which studied the fitness failure rates.
“Chiefs overwhelmingly and members of this committee were hearing from all these chiefs that their recruits and their candidates were not able to pass the entry-level fitness standards and then once they got in they weren’t being successful. They were dropping out because of some of the fitness standards,” Nee told committee members.
The committee also voted to move the timing of physical fitness performance testing at the academies weeks later into training to give recruits more time to heal from injuries and to improve. The state tells us almost 30 percent of police recruits were failing their pre-entry fitness testing which ends any chance of becoming a police officer.
