Clearwater County Sheriff’s Office Sets Physical Fitness Standard

An officer may be driving around in his squad car for a few hours and the next minute he’s on a foot in a pursuit. Anything can happen. The Clearwater County Sheriff decided to do something about it since being elected in 2015.

“We’re hoping that this will get the deputies exercising a little bit more and make them healthier,” said Clearwater County Sheriff Darin Halverson. “Also it’s a responsibility I feel that we have to the people that we protect and serve that when we show up on a call we should be able to physically do the job.”

The yearly standard will be based on age and gender and will begin this fall. The test will include activities such as push-ups, sit-ups and a mile run.

We’ll she how this goes this fall we’re kind of thinking maybe we’d like to look at an obstacle course type thing too down the road,” said Halverson. “Try to do things that are more practical to our job things that we might run into.

Any officer struggling in a certain area can look forward to next year to make improvements.

“The mile run is based on time and we have it based on a scale from 50 percent to a 100 percent and the different time brackets that you can make,” said Halverson.

After his or her initial hire most officers aren’t required to undergo fitness testing, but this standard will beneift the department and community.

“Let’s say there’s a medical and someone needs help with something I want to make sure that our people are up to the task of physically being able to do that,” said Clearwater County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Ryan Solee.

Research began last year and the Sheriff’s Office spoke to other agencies to get their feedback. Chief Deputy Ryan So-lee also gave input to set the standard. He’s already preparing for the test.

“We have gym memberships that we offer out there in the community and a lot of us have already started partaking in 5k and 10k runs for fundraisers,” said Solee.

The plan for now is to use the high school to conduct the fitness tests.