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Strong arms of the law
By JAY CRIDLIN TAMPA -- Florida's toughest weather turned out to be no match for Florida's toughest cop. As the wind whipped around and lighting lit the sky Tuesday morning, a force of nature named Jay Wilber took the coveted title of Toughest Cop Alive at the Florida Law Enforcement Games on the University of Tampa campus. "I've been training for four years," said Wilber, a detective with the Palm Beach Gardens Police Department. "And my goal for four years has been to spank every guy out here." He's grinning, of course. The Florida Law Enforcement Games, an Olympiad of sorts for the state's most skilled and athletic law enforcement officers, isn't about cutthroat competition. It's more of an incentive for law enforcement officers to stay in top-notch physical shape and bring distinction to their departments. "It's a goal for me every year," said last year's winner, Brian Plancarte, a detective with the Broward County Sheriff's Office. "Every year I come out and train hard, and it keeps me in shape throughout the year. I just use it as a training tool."
Events range from wrestling to bass fishing to chess, but the top event is the Toughest Cop Alive, or TCA, competition, which this year drew 44 entrants. "The TCA event is the elite event to be in," said Barbara Weber, a training sergeant with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, who won Toughest Cop Alive among women. "I get psyched up to do it the rest of the day." The TCA competition tests competitors' endurance with eight events in a single day: a 3-mile run, shot put, 100-meter dash, bench press, rope climb, 100-meter swim, pull-ups and an obstacle course. Wilber, who scored 160 more points than his closest competitor, said he trained all year. "Many hours of swimming and running," he said. His nephew, Corey Blake, 12, grabbed Wilber's sizable biceps. "What does that tell you?" he said. It took a while for Wilber's victory to get under way. The 3-mile run, originally set to kick off at 7 a.m., was delayed more than two hours by heavy rain, lightning and the threat of a tornado. "It was like, 'Are we going to be able to do this today?"' said Doug Bingler, a Tampa police officer and the master coordinator of the games. "Fortunately, the guy upstairs let us do what we had to do. He stopped the rain." "That's why they call it the Toughest Cop -- you've got to be willing to do anything," Plancarte said. "You can train for certain events, but you're not going to have ideal conditions all the time. You've got to do what you've got to do." First-time competitor Steve Brady, a deputy in the Lee County Sheriff's Office, said he thinks people have looked at tough cops "a little differently" since Sept. 11.
Brady competed in a shirt bearing the slogan "United We Stand" and featuring an image of the New York City skyline, "just to show support for law enforcement and firefighters, and everybody that was affected," he said. The grueling competition is enough to drain even the most physically fit cops. "By this point in the day," said Casey Oravetz, a Department of Commerce agent, minutes after finishing the obstacle course, "your legs are pretty much Jell-o." Holder said it was a relief to be done, but she shrugged off her overall win among female cops. "Same old same old," she said. "I'm hard on myself. I will go down my point system and try to fine-tune where I can get better and better and better." Wearing his uncle's gold medal around his neck, Corey Blake basked in Wilber's win. "Amazing," he said. "It's like he won the Olympics."
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Headlines From the Times local news desks Howard Troxler |
