Oswego police chief places priority on officer fitness, wellness

Oswego Police Chief Jason Bastin knows how fitness and wellness go hand in hand.

Officer wellness has been a priority for Bastin since being named police chief last year.

“Officer fitness is a part of officer wellness,” Bastin said. “Fit officers have better outcomes than unfit officers because when you’re in a real high stress situation, the fitter you are, the more able you are to think through that situation. You don’t become overwhelmed when you get that adrenaline dump. Fitness matters for our profession.”

He said cardiovascular disease is a real problem in the law enforcement profession, noting that officers on average have their first heart attack at age 46.

“That’s 19 years younger than the general public,” Bastin said.

A fitness room is part of the department’s state-of-the-art police station at 3355 Woolley Road, which opened in 2018. The department has an on break exercise program.

“They can come in here and they can work out for 30 minutes during their shift,” Bastin said.

Once a year, the department brings in certified trainers, physical therapists and nutritionists to talk to the officers and the department also provides fitness tips.

The department every May does fitness testing on its officers. In May, it introduced a new fitness test designed to better gauge officers’ fitness level.

Officers have to take a fitness test every year. Previously, the department used the state’s physical fitness test for police officers known as the Peace Officer Wellness Evaluation Report (POWER) Test.

“It’s a 1.5 mile run, you touch your toes, you do some sit-ups and you do one rep on the bench,” Bastin said. “It’s not the world’s best test of fitness for this job.”

Patrol Sgt. Andy Most came up with a new test. Officers had the choice to take the new test or the previous test and the majority of them chose to take the new test.

“We had 43 out of 53 officers opt in to do the new fitness test, which was really great,” Bastin said.

Most said he designed the test to more accurately determine an officer’s fitness than the state’s test.

“The components of it, in my opinion and through my research, are much more applicable to what an officer does on a daily basis and those indicators of fitness that they have,” he said.

Those taking the test start out doing a 500 meter row on a rowing machine.

“It’s counterpart in the POWER test would be the 1.5 mile run,” Most said. “I’ve have been at this job for 11 years and I’ve had a handful of foot pursuits. I’ve never run 1.5 miles. But I have sprinted really, really hard for 30 seconds to two minutes. The purpose of doing that at the beginning of the test is because to do the rest of the components, you have to be cardiovascularly in shape.”

There is a three minute break between each activity. Officers will then participate in a bench press test, also designed to simulate what they might be required to do as part of their job.

“If you have to push someone off of you or if you have to push a car down the road, your upper body pushing strength matters,” Most said.

Participants also are tested on how many pull ups they can do. The final activity involves seeing how many times they can walk a 140 foot hallway back and forth while carrying kettlebells – 53 pounds per hand for men and 35 pounds per hand for women.

Most noted the activity is similar to the weight of the gear that officers have on them all the time.

“We constantly walk with weight,” he said. “Between my belt and my vest and all my extras, I have 33 pounds of weight continuously on my body throughout the course of duty for 12 hours.”

In addition, officers are sometimes called upon to carry people, such as in a mass casualty situation.

Bastin hopes that officers will understand that being fitter now will help them in the future.

“I want officers to be fitter now because that way they will be able to retire from this job after 20 or 30 years and still live a long life,” he said. “They can spend their retirement years with their families and get to enjoy a lot of the things they probably missed while they were doing the job.”