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Comment by prescriptivist | Hacker News Reader

Watching this video is a reminder that if we could just enforce a minimum level of cardiovascular health via something like a three mile run time limitation or something like that the police force would naturally weed out people with poor impulse control and probably be overall a more humane and decent force.

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There's already a problem with roided-out cops, who aren't going to have any problems passing your hypothetical three mile run test. You're probably thinking in particular about the fat guy by the cake, but I've met guys of similar build in the cycling community who have no problem riding a imperial century in six and a half hours.

Dudes on a cycle with big red swollen faces and gynecomastia aren't going to run 8 minute miles. HGH maybe but that's a different class of PED for different reasons.

This is an extremely naive understanding of how anabolic steroids work. Side effects such as the two you've listed here — respectively: upregulation of the RAAS pathway causing increased blood pressure and sodium retention, and a failure to include an aromatase inhibitor to prevent the conversion of testosterone to estrogens — are relatively rare, especially to a degree where they'd be highly visible.

Also, an 8 minute mile is not a particularly high bar to clear and with the increased work capacity granted by basically every single popular steroid (funnily enough, HGH would probably not confer immediate/direct benefits in this scenario in the same way that less exotic PEDs could) it would be trivial for most users to do with little to no preparation.

Sorry for being unclear: the roided up and jacked cops are one problem. The overweight ones are another. The former are more likely to have problematic attitudes (specifically: roid rage) than the latter, which your proposed physical fitness test would not catch. And I'm noting that you might be surprised about the level of aerobic fitness in some fat people (the latter).

>minimum level

Meditating again on the conflicting requirement that:

1) Cops be intelligent, physically fit, free of troublesome political biases, cool under stress, be willing to risk being shot by criminals and,

2) Not be paid $500,000 a year.

"Cops are paid too much" is an evergreen topic on sfgate. Here's a recent story: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/S-F-overtime-costs-soar-... If you want the best of the best of the best, you'll have to pay for it.

"Pfft, I could do that." Okay, why aren't you? Quit your tech job today and head to the police academy. Hmm? You don't want to? That's odd...

> Hmm? You don't want to? That's odd...

Well. Police is a cesspool. Police world is the closest you can get to being a criminal without being a criminal. Very few people want that for themselves.

The fact that being a criminal or being nearly a criminal pays so little is only one of the factors why people want none of that.

> Not be paid $500,000 a year.

How much is this in comparison to the costs of defending or settling lawsuits against the police department as a result of bad cops?

This is a silly comment. Physical fitness requirements are hardly unusual (they have them in the UK for example). Nobody is asking that police are "the best"; just that they're not the worst. $500k is a hilariously far-out figure.

My brother, I live in a town of 40k people. We pay over $20m a year to cops and their pensions. There is no crime here.

I’d also accept a shift to Public Counseling over Policing. Nobody in that job needs most of what makes a Cop a Cop; attitude, equipment, expectations, training, reward and belief systems.

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