Time to Re-Impose Tougher Physical Fitness Standards for New Cops

Forget the new NYPD dress code banning shorts, turtlenecks and mismatched shoelaces for cops. How about the department instead re-institute physical fitness standards for cops?

The NYPD’s updated style guide bans shorts on transit beats, white turtlenecks and tactical cargo shorts on patrol beats and mismatched, colored shoelaces other than black.

Instead of focusing on the sartorial style of cops, the NYPD should prioritize the issue of overweight police officers by mandating physical fitness requirements for new recruits. Those standards were lowered last year by then-NYPD training chief Juanita Holmes to encourage more women to join the force and to stave off a record wave of retirements.

The department scrapped its 1.5-mile mile run, which needed to be completed by men and women in 14 minutes and 21 seconds, and replaced the six-foot wall inside the police academy gym with a chain-link fence said to be easier to climb.

The only physical fitness criterion now required to become a cop is the Job Standard Test (JST), a multi-step course which must be completed in four minutes and 28 seconds.

The result is more out-of-shape cops coming out of the police academy.

I walked behind a pair of obese beat cops outside Bryant Park the other day. One male, the other female. No way either could catch a perp in a foot race, let alone run 1.5 miles.

The department can’t retroactively require cops to lose weight; that would have to happen through collective bargaining between the City and police unions.

Just Do It.

If, as he says, Mayor Adams is serious about combatting crime by increasing the number of new police officers, he can use all the fit new cops he can get.

After initially threatening to cancel new police classes due to what was perceived at the time to be a looming $7 billion budget deficit, Adams’ fiscal picture has brightened in the ensuing months. He recently committed to adding two police academy classes to the upcoming fiscal year 2025 budget. [The NYC fiscal year ends on June 30.]

That means adding 600 new recruits to the cop rolls in 2024, raising the total tally of new NYPD recruits in 2024 to 2,400, according to the city. There are 1,200 recruits in the police academy from the July and October classes. They will hit city streets in January 2025 and April 2025, respectively. Major crime has been trending down the past two years, but it is still above pre-COVID crime rates.

“I always say that public safety is the prerequisite to prosperity,” Adams said when announcing the new police academy classes. “By driving down crime, we have saved lives and laid the foundation for economic recovery, but we want to keep that going and we won’t do anything to risk all our progress,” he added.

That’s all good. But the NYPD should not apply lower physical fitness standards to new recruits than the department did to their predecessors.

Ken Frydman is CEO of Source Communications, a strategic and tactical communications firm in Manhattan.