Police fitness tests

The police have to undergo fitness tests.  It’s understandable when you think about it. The Police need to be able to run after criminals and make sure that they can catch them.  The big police officers you see in films are works of fiction (I hope) because of this test.  So why even think about it here?  Because I want to know what these fitness tests are and what happens to police officers when they fail.  

So I asked the top five most complainted about English Polices forces (giving the Welsh ones a bit of a break) the same questions, which are:

1.How often your officers have to perform fitness tests, as part of their duties

2.Details of the fitness test (What they are required to perform)

3.How many officers failed their fitness test from 01/01/15 to 01/01/16

4.What happens when an officer fails a fitness test.

Again this is a good indicator of how fit their forces are and what they are doing to try and bring this up.  Not only that, but what happens to those that fail.  Are they moved to another position, or something else?

Well The results are:

Name	Often	Failed
Greater Manchester Police	Mandatory - Annually	107
Thames Valley Police	Annually	Referred to website
Devon and Cornwall Constabulary	Annually (I think)	17
West Yorkshire Police	Annually	21
Avon and Somerset Constabulary

A couple of things before we move on. Manchester Police gave me ALL their fitness tests.  This includes their specialist training for firearms and things like that. Pretty cool eh?  I think that it is the failure rate is so high, because they are not just including the ones for non specialist forces.  Not only that but Devon and Cornwall gave me the answers from two other FoI request (Which they are entitled to do and has been done with me before) but these one included the average trouser leg measurement.  Your guess is as good as mine.

Now at time of writing I have yet to hear back from West Yorkshire and Avon and Somerset, but when I do I will update this section. The cool thing is we can see what the thin blue line has to do to maintain its slimness (See what I did there?).  Doesn't it interest you to see what we can discover if we start looking?