to agree that fat coppers need to slim down

[shagmundfreud]

... or have their pay docked. Or something.

Rarely in agreement with government plans for anything, but now that over 50% of male policemen are apparently officially overweight, I think plans to encourage force them to lose weight are a very good thing.

How can they possibly chase and catch criminals (who are mostly young and fit and scared) if they're carrying extra poundage?

Want to add, interesting that smaller percentage of women coppers are fat, given that a higher percentage of females than males are overweight in the general population.

Sorry about spelling mistakes bloody predictive texting

I think they should bring back the minimum height for police officers. Some of the new ones just don't look imposing at all.

You are being very silly. First of all lots of people who are 'overweight' are actually healthier- see the examples of athletes who come up as 'obese' because they have lots of muscle mass, police likely to be similar if they are physically very active. Secondly it's not even true that more women are overweight than men in the population as a whole. There are about 10% more obese men than obese women, partly because of the failure of BMI to account for muscle mass and partly because it is more culturally acceptable for men to get heavier. I mean really, ffs, how hard would it be to just give the ones on active duty a fitness test rather than weigh them which is proven to be inaccurate?

Maybe they could pair up the fat, slow coppers with a fast, fit one?

Then when the skinny one has caught the crim the fat one can sit on him until the wagon gets there?

Win-win I reckon.

I'd be in favour of Police Officers needing to do a Basic Fitness Test,as in the Army.
It is what it says.Basic.

PleaseDeleteMeLetMeGo I said fat for a reason and not weight, not weight for the particular reason of the rugby player analogy - not muscle but fat as muscle doesn't put the extra strain on the internal organs but fat will put extra strain on internal organs unlike muscle

DH is a slim fit copper and had his nose broken last year cos his chubby coleague didnt get to him in time to help him.

I worked in residential childcare for years and 2 members of staff were obese and if you worked a shift with them you ended up doing everything yourself whilst they sat down and watched tv.

I do think if you do a job which entails the need for restraints,persuit and physical activity you need to take responsibility to stay in good enough shape to do it all. The police have to pass a fitness test to join after all.

Dh says the offices are full of chubby copers who have to do desk jobs due to lack of fitness.

If i was being attacked id expect an officer to be able to run quickly to my defense.

I'm not sure whether I think its a case of fat coppers slimming down,though.

If a regular fitness test can be passed ,it is no concern of mine if the individual carries excess weight or smokes.

Wow, Ledkr, that must have been an interesting debrief after that assault. Most coppers put the blame with the person who assaulted them, not their colleagues.

There are no height restrictions any more because that would be deemed discriminatory.

And I do think they need to slim down but where's the incentive when they have cars, bikes, dogs and helicopters?

Loving the comment about trimming their gobs - I work with these fuckers everyday and whilst some are lovely, the majority are jumped up twats in a uniform, who just had to learn their ABC to pass the written test...

Can midgets join the police?

I know a copper who is a size 0 and about 4 feet 10. She is lovely. Her twin is also in the job. Two midgets!

DH is in the RAF. He has to take a "beep" test every year to prove his fitness. Surely it would be very easy for the police to do the same.

I think some people on this thread have been watching far too many episodes of "Cops on Camera".

For fucks sake.

It always amazes me how much some people really, really hate fat people. Disguised as concern for their health of course.

You would have to explain the beep test to them, very carefully. They may not comprehend.

Gosh arachnophobic you really are offensive.

It'll be all those doughnuts won't it...

[watches too many American tv shows]

Okay, this is my first post here and I'm a bit nervous because I doubt there is much sympathy for my point of view.

Both my husband and I are police officers with a combined service of over 37 years. We have never been weighed by our employer so I am sceptical about Windsor's statistics.

I believe the army may spend a considerable amount of time doing fitness training when not on deployment. Do you also want us to do fitness training on duty?

Training in our own time is not easy, my department has long supplied camp beds for us to sleep on in our locker rooms because it is so common for us not to have enough time to get home between shifts. Some of my colleagues regularly live at work for three days at a time for this reason. That is not condusive to healthy eating and neither do they feel like doing fitness training when they finally get home to their families. My department's shift pattern has just one day off in-between periods at work. We do not have training facilities at work and neither does the force have swimming pools.

You may often see several officers struggling to detain a single suspect. That is because they are trying to safely restrain the person not have a fight. A number of you have criticised police officers for struggling to detain young, fit men once caught because the officer is unfit. I am 5'5" and of a small build. I would struggle to pin a man down on my own, does that mean I should be sacked?

Windsor is proposing that police officers work until they are 60. I think that when I am 59 years old it is unlikely that I will be able to catch 18 year old men in a foot chase no matter how much training I do.

I do not disagree with an increase in the academic entry requirement for police officers, I have a degree. However, it seems strange to me that Windsor is combining that with a reduction in salary for recruits.

I hate the way threads like this always descend into "Oh, well my brother's uncle's cousin weight fifty stone but runs eight marathons a week".

We're not talking about him. We're talking about whether it's ok for men working in the police force to be fat. It's not.

My dh is a serving officer, with over 20yrs in service. At no point has he ever worked in a station with its own gym or fitness equipment.

I only know of one unit of serving officers who fitness train on duty - and it is considered part of their duty - they are a 'territorial support/riot' unit, and every single one of them come in as obese on the BMI charts.

Windsor is talking out of his backside with his statistics. As TiredTrout states upthread ^^ he is using flawed data, from a small sample and applying it to a large population of serving officers.

I would like to point out that The Sheehy Report in 1993 decided that there were too many officers doing non front line jobs and stated that they should all be civilianised - as a result of this, the older, or unfit officers cannot be taken from front line duties and placed elsewhere.

It's pretty obvious from some of the replies that there are a lot of people who know very little about day to day policing apart from the sensationalist crap that is on tv.

What about women - is it ok for them to be police officers and 'fat'?

Who and what gets to define what is officially too fat to be a police officer?
BMI? Load of crap. Fitness tests? Sure - every officer has to pass the bleep test during training.

Noddyholder - love your post

scurry Are you kidding me? Of course he didnt blame his colleague for getting hit.It was more of a personal discussion when he told me he was calling for help as a baying mob surrounded him and his chubby colleague was lumoxing towards him at a slow pace and dint get there in time to help.

Defensive much!

Ilovefluffysheep - I agree with your posts.

In my force we used to have a gym in most stations, just basic equipment. These went quite some time ago. We do not get free gym membership, we have to pay for it.

We are not given time to train in work time. Fire officers are. If they give us some hours each week to train then there would be no issue. As it is, we don't have enough officers on shift to cover every call as it is. If we work even less hours each on the beat then there would be even less officers on the beat. At what point will it become dangerous? How would you feel if you phoned the police in an emergency and was told that they'd have to get someone out of the gym first?

Shift working doesn't help encourage a healthy lifestyle. We work 60 hours in 6 days then get 4 days off. The first day is spent sleeping and getting back to normal following night shifts. Maybe instead of sleeping I could go to the gym

The height restriction was abolished on the basis that it discriminates against women. I'm only 5'4" yet find that I get in far less "fights" than my 6'2" male colleagues. So what does height have to do with it?

I challenge the fittest of you to put on body armour that weighs around 14lb, a tool belt with gas, handcuffs, torch, limb restraints, first aid kit and keys and then put on steel plated boots weighing 2.5lb each then go for a sprint down the street and see how well you do. Even usain bolt would struggle.