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The Importance of Staying Physically Fit While Pursuing a Career in Law Enforcement
When an individual decides to pursue a career in law enforcement, they must meet all the requirements and needs of not only their department but also the people they serve. Within the public’s eye, police officers every day are held to a higher expectation than most people. Every individual that becomes a law enforcement officer takes an oath to serve and protect their community. With that, officers out in the field are expected to remain in excellent physical fitness condition in order to carry out that very oath they once took. Failing to remain in good physical shape as a law enforcement officer carries many risks not only to the officer themself but also to the people they promise to serve and protect every day.
Maintaining a healthy physical fitness lifestyle is an uprising issue within the United States. A large majority of the United States population has been classified as either overweight or obese. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the year 2019, 35.2% of the adult population (18 years of age or older) was classified as being overweight in the United States. From that same group of individuals, 31.4% of those were classified as obese. But who’s not to say that some of those individuals are active or prior law enforcement officers? Law enforcement officers have very physically strenuous and sometimes stressful tasks that they have only moments to react to. For example, if a law enforcement officer has to chase after a fleeing suspect on foot. Some of the crucial physical fitness attributes the officer needs in order to catch that suspect are strength, speed, flexibility, endurance, and coordination. Now all of those attributes are crucial to catching up to the suspect, but what happens next after you catch up to them? From my prior law enforcement experiences, a fleeing suspect will more than likely not just stop resisting arrest once you catch up to them. They will more than likely want to fight or do anything they have to do in order to avoid being arrested. Although it may be ideal for a suspect to just turn around and put their hands behind their back, that will not always be the case. When deadly force is not necessary, a law enforcement officer may have to physically fight a resisting suspect in order to gain enough compliance to successfully carry out an arrest. This is when being physically fit is crucial for the life of an officer that is in a physical altercation with a suspect. Maintaining long-lasting strength and endurance during a physical altercation could be the only thing that determines if a law enforcement officer goes home to their family at the end of their shift or not.
Between 2004 and 2009 the Buffalo Cardio-Metabolic Occupational Police Stress Study was conducted and provided information that law enforcement officers have some of the poorest cardiovascular disease health profiles of any other occupation. This study that was provided by the “United States Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health ” showed that 46.9% of the officers that participated, worked a nighttime-related shift which was compared to the non-law enforcement participants whom only 9% of those individuals worked a nighttime-related shift. Of those law enforcement individuals who participated in this study, almost half of those officers suffered from depression and were “nearly four times more likely to sleep less than six hours in a 24-hour period than the general population (33.0% vs. 8.0%).” Throughout this study, all law enforcement and nonlaw enforcement participants were compared for not only what their everyday job duties intel but also compared what kind of physical fitness lifestyle these individuals live on and off duty. This was when a shocking and eye-opening discovery was made. Out of all the law enforcement officers participating, a much higher percentage of them were found to be living an unhealthy physical fitness lifestyle. In fact, 40.5% of these officers were classified as being obese, and in comparison with nonlaw enforcement participants were deemed to be overall more unhealthy than the general population. Other researchers have found that if an individual lives an unhealthy physical fitness lifestyle, it will adversely affect their mental health and could lead to mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, stress, lowered self-esteem, cause irregular sleeping patterns, and cause continuous problems with concentration. With that said, living a healthy physical fitness lifestyle is detrimental to not only everyone but especially to active law enforcement individuals because of how much it can impact their mental health. Law enforcement individuals who fail to maintain a good overall fitness level could put themselves at an increased risk for suicide at some point in their careers.
In October of 2019, the “Police Executive Research Forum” published an article called “An Occupational Risk: What Every Police Agency Should Do To Prevent Suicide Among Its Officers.” This article, explains many different ways to help improve the mental health of law enforcement officers in hopes that it will deter the action of suicide. Although there is no research that suggests staying physically fit decreases the chances of someone committing suicide, there is research that supports that living a healthy physically fit lifestyle improves mental health in a lot of different ways. In 2018 statistics show that 82% of officer-related suicides took place while they were still on active duty. Most of these individuals, at the time of their death, were not living a healthy physical fitness lifestyle. In fact, 38% of those individuals were less than 1 year away from their retirement and another 21% were 13 months to 3 years away from their retirement. Emphasized throughout this article, is the importance of wellness programs being set in place within all law enforcement agencies around the nation. According to the Ruderman Family Foundation, “Officers have depression at rates significantly higher than the general population,” and to help decrease these rates “It is important that wellness programs in police agencies extend beyond the limited goal of preventing suicide, to include the overall mental and physical health and well-being of police officers.” Implementing wellness programs in law enforcement agencies, not only could lower the risk of law enforcement-related suicides, but it will also improve the overall health and wellness of those officers out in the field.
Within every profession, an employee will be given training, preparation, and tools that are provided to them in order to successfully carry out their roles/duties. The same type of materials is given to law enforcement officers as well. Many officers are required to complete a field training program with their agency, complete a state-certified police program, and will be required to maintain a certain amount of training hours per year in order to retain their police certification. One of the biggest and most important parts of a law enforcement officer’s training is maintaining and building a good physical fitness level. Many tools are provided to law enforcement officers such as handcuffs, guns, batons, and tasers but the most important tool a law enforcement officer can have is a healthy physical fitness lifestyle. Maintaining a healthy and fit body will ensure that an officer is more capable of handling some of law enforcement’s most straining and physically exerting requirements that many officers experience every day. But if an officer isn’t physically fit enough to restrain a suspect, why doesn’t he use the tools he was given in order to restrain that person? Tools like the taser or baton or if he has to, why doesn’t he just shoot the suspect? That’s why the officer was given those tools in the first place right? Well no, a law enforcement officer isn’t given those tools to be used when they aren’t physically fit enough to fight another individual. Those tools that are provided to officers such as a taser, baton, pepper spray, and other weapons that are categorized as “non-lethal weapons” are only to be used in certain circumstances. That also includes having to discharge a deadly weapon at someone. Law enforcement officers are required to use only the reasonable amount of force necessary to stop a threat. This is otherwise known as the amount of “use of force” an officer uses. For example, an unhealthy overweight officer is initiated in a foot pursuit with an individual that is suspected of committing petit theft. The officer cannot fatally shoot the suspect just because the officer is not physically fit enough to keep up with the fleeing individual. If this officer did decide to shoot the individual and no exigent circumstances existed, this would be considered excessive use of force. At that time, the officer along with the agency he works for would have to hold full accountability for his actions. If law enforcement officer decides they have to deploy the tools that are provided to them, because they are physically unfit to perform the duties they were hired to do, that will come with a lot of liability not only for that officer but also for the agency they work for. The tools that law enforcement officers are given are just that, they are tools to be used when a situation presents itself where an officer deems it necessary to use them. These tools are not meant to be relied on to make sure that an officer gets to go home at the end of their shift. Law enforcement officers out in the field should be able to rely on their own physical capabilities to get themselves out of any and all dangerous situations they may find themselves in while on duty. Remaining healthy and physically fit throughout the entirety of a law enforcement career is crucial for not only the life of an officer but can also release an officer from a lot of unneeded legality liability issues that may put them at risk if they remain in an unfit or unhealthy physical lifestyle.
Living a healthy and physically fit lifestyle for some people is a must, and for others it’s not. Some individuals decide to eat salads for lunch, and others find it more convenient to stop by the nearest Mcdonald’s drive-through for lunch. Some people strive to be the best they can every day both physically and mentally and others choose not to be. Maintaining a healthy and physically fit lifestyle is a choice that almost everyone in this nation gets to choose from or not. But in fact, as of 2019, there are approximately 670,279 individuals in this country that don’t get to choose if they are physically fit or not. These individuals are the men and women that decided to dedicate their careers to law enforcement. When an individual decides to pursue a career as a law enforcement officer, they lose their rights to being unfit. Officers all around the nation are expected to be in prime physical fitness shape, in order to carry out the requirements of their job. Officers all around the United States are held to a much higher expectation than most individuals. In order to fulfill those expectations, officers are expected to remain in a healthy and physically fit lifestyle that directly impacts their ability to carry out the duties of their job both physically and mentally. Having a physically fit lifestyle while excelling in a law enforcement career will reduce the risk of injury while on duty, it will lower the risks of any legal liability an officer may have if they chose not to be fit, and it will also positively impacts officers mental health as a job in law enforcement can be both stressful and traumatizing at times. Remaining physically fit is crucial for officers that may need to pursue fleeing suspects or overpower the ones that are trying to resist arrest.
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