Sheriff takes fitness off back burner
After scrapping his predecessor's program in 2001, he sets a new plan to get his deputies in shape.
By STEVE THOMPSON
Published October 1, 2005
Pasco County Sheriff Bob White ended a memo on physical fitness this week by asking his deputies to make a good-faith effort.
"This program should be beneficial to everyone," he wrote, "and is not being done to cause anxiety or stress."
His memo reintroduced mandatory fitness tests to an agency that has seen stress and anxiety over them before.
Starting this month, deputies will do a 1.5-mile walk/run, a 300-meter run, a vertical jump, a minute of situps, and either the bench press or pushups. They'll have to do it before the end of the year, then four times next year.
"Our mission is to simply gather information on the fitness levels of our members," the memo says. "Once the data is collected, reasonable, individual goals can be established for each person to work on in order to help them become physically fit."
In 1999, under Sheriff Lee Cannon, 514 sheriff's employees took a practice test that required them to run, climb, crawl and drag a 150-pound dummy.
Forty-seven failed.
Cannon went back to the drawing board. His solution: Make the test easier. After that, everyone started passing.
White, two days after becoming sheriff in 2001, killed the program.
While a candidate, White had said he would scrap the existing test and develop his own. It would not penalize people for failing and be implemented gradually.
"You've got to treat everyone fairly," White said then. "You need to set a goal or expectation (of fitness) and continually work toward that."
In his memo this week, White listed some things he has already done to loosen gun belts: buy fitness equipment for deputies, add nutrition classes to training and teach some agency members to be "personal fitness specialists." White also has made it so new hires can't be smokers.
"We are now ready," he wrote this week, "for the next initiative."
--Steve Thompson covers the Pasco County Sheriff's Office. He can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6245 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6245. His e-mail address is sthompson@sptimes.com