Shooting, talking, eating donuts: Inside the changes to NYPD’s tests

What does it take to be a police officer in New York aside from liking donuts? It looks like not even that is necessary anymore! Recently, the New York Police Department lowered its requirement regarding police recruits by scrapping a timed, 1.5-mile run in the police academy. It’s preoccupying thinking about their shooting abilities! This was told to The Post by the department’s head of training.

Policemen are such a controversial figure everywhere, there’s not an ACAB movement for no reason. Exactly due to these situations we should wonder why is the NYPD doing all these changes?  According to training Chief Juanita Holmes, these changes have a reason to be and it is that it will help more women applicants to join the team. 

If this is a gender situation then we should be wondering how this would affect men too. Will it be easier for men to join the NYPD and then keep leaving women out? International women’s day is right around the corner, which means that far from celebrating anything, we should be sharply critical of this kind of situation. Is this really a political situation or is it a smoke screen?

What’s going on with the NYPD? 

Since July 2022 several reports have been made on the NYPD dramatically relaxing the requirements to pass the police fitness test. This department has also been in trouble recruiting new cops, honestly, each time the figure of the cop gets a worse image. Also many applicants can also access other better-paying jobs in Long Island or elsewhere in the country.

So unlike Chief Juanita Holmes first mentioned, this is definitely not a measurement taken in order to make it easier for women. Nobody wants to be a cop, but is lowering the requirements to be one the answer? Definitely it looks like a quick solution at first glance, however it’s a terrible idea considering the police should take care of us. Which, we all know it doesn’t, but anyway. 

Now, the only physical fitness criterion to join the NYPD is the Job Standard Test, which is a multi-step course that must be completed in four minutes and twenty-eight seconds. Holmes did mention insistently that the time run needed to be completed both by men & women in fourteen minutes and twenty one seconds  isn’t needed anymore. The truth is running & shooting are cops’ duties. 

Is this inside change a gender issue? 

The Olympic games have shown us how capable women are to develop a strong physical condition and beat male records. The fact that women either don’t feel attracted to this job, get discriminated against or feel like it’s not a safe duty for them are three different possibilities that go further. Holmes’ justification to the low physical requirements is that  “No cop on patrol runs a mile and a half.”

Also, the low demand to become part of the NYPD has to do with other situations such as getting better paid. Wouldn’t a better solution to get new qualified members to the NYPD be changing salaries to higher ones? Suddenly all Home’s arguments seem to spin around the physical condition test, how unnecessary it is and the path it’ll open for women. 

By this point of the article, we know this is not it and gender is an entire smoke screen to cover the fact that no one wants to be a cop anymore. Maybe people got finally diluted with cops after all those shootings to the black community with the whole cop idea in general. 

After all, it looks like this is a gender situation, since feminism, Black Lives Matter and ACAB movements seem to have changed the general perspective regarding cops.  Might this situation make security institutions pursue real solutions to protect citizens aside from shootings.