Possible police recruits go through mock interviews, pushups to see if law enforcement is for them – Chicago Tribune

A group of young people standing outside a classroom at the Griffiths YMCA talked about strategies on Sunday morning as the officers who had just interviewed them discussed whether those strategies would work.

One young man was concerned that he wasn’t making enough eye contact with the mock panel, including Griffith Police Chief Greg Mance. I was hoping I could find my sweet spot.

“I tried to show that whoever was speaking was interested in what they were saying,” he told his peers before Mance came out, asking them for criticism and encouragement. called back.

The four, along with 17 other young men and women, spent the morning doing office work for Griffith Police Department’s Police Candidate Training Course, demonstrating their interviewing skills and learning what police exams were like. I checked whether

The Police Candidate Training Workshop was sponsored by Indiana University Northwest in collaboration with Griffith, Crown Point, Munster and Valparaiso police departments.

But the afternoon brought pain. Potential candidates underwent five physical fitness tests that they had to take during the application process to join the division.

These tests may look like a walker, but they required three vertical jumps at least 13.5 inches above the candidate’s reach, 24 sit-ups, 21 push-ups, and a 300-meter and 1-mile run. is the best of Candidates will be disqualified from the interview process, according to Carl Zurbriggen, group vice president of the Crossroads YMCA and his program partner.

“For example, you have to do the vertical jump from a standing position, which means you can’t start running. “You might think our jobs here know how to do 21 push-ups, but the department expects something else.

As a bonus, Crossroads offers candidates a three-month membership of the local Y chapter so they can continue to hone their skills, Zurbriggen said.

Mance came up with the training program shortly after becoming Griffith’s chief in 2013, he said. He found that, like other chiefs in many other departments in Northwest Indiana, the applicants he had were predominantly white men.

“We really lacked diversity. We had a lot of retirees at the same time, so we wanted to attract more diverse candidates,” says Mance. “We wanted to find a way to give all candidates an equal level of success, so one of my former professors, she spoke with Ellen Szarleta of the Center for Urban and Regional Excellence and asked her She said Carl and I came up with this strategy. Workshop.”

The trial was an immediate success, and Griffiths recruited only the second female officer in history, Leslie Malelich, he said. Also, according to a recent survey he had to complete for the state, the Griffith Police Department had two women, multiple officers who identified as being of two or three races, and ” It has been shown that there are two or three “Hispanic” officers, he said.

“The number of minority and female candidates was staggering,” he said. “And even if they weren’t hired by us in the end, many went on to get him hired by the ISP[Indiana State Police]and other departments, so they had that success.” It was nice to see the

The size of Sunday classes (the workshops were held every two years, with a year off during the pandemic) was much smaller than before, and Mance said the numbers were a factor in the interest of law enforcement as a career. Agreed it correlated with the decline. Still, there was a nice sample of people who deserve every shot going into law enforcement if they want to.

“I hate to lose a good officer because he missed a half-inch jump,” Mance said. “The state has important achievable standards and we want to help people get there.”

Jarrod Devon, 22, of St. John waited patiently for his interviewer after a mock interview in the morning. He said he originally thought it was a one-on-one, so he froze when he saw the panel.

“I’m not a great communicator, but I was able to ask some good questions,” he said. “I am currently working in the Armed Guard, so I want this to be my career.”

After the debriefing he felt much better.

“They said I needed to be more outgoing and more dedicated to myself,” said Devon, who had always wanted to be a cop.

Mance said another workshop could be held in 2024 if there was interest, so anyone interested in becoming a police officer should email gmance@griffith.in.gov. or follow your local police department’s social media pages for announcements.

Michelle L. Quinn is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.