Something's gone terribly wrong with how we train our police

Me and the Farm Manager were somewhat acquainted with a local kid who had dreams of becoming a cop. That's not a bad dream to have; hell, any kind of dream for kids today is a good dream to have... these are tough times for dreamers.

So this skinny brown kid heads off to one of the many colleges offering the "police foundations" course. That's an invention of the community college system intended to offer pre-police-training training to aspiring police officers. Thirty or forty years ago these programs did not exist. Now they are ubiquitous.

The community college system spews out at least ten times more "police foundations" graduates than will ever find real policing jobs. Most of them will spin their wheels in various iterations of security guard work. It's a hyper-competitive job market for "police foundations" grads.

We saw a picture of our skinny brown friend after his first year of police foundations. This skinny kid had morphed into a hulk. He was massive. Massive in a way that just screamed ROID ALERT. I don't care how much time he spent in the weight room - his new physique could only be the result of steroids.

Police college is a hyper-competitive environment. It stands to reason that people will do whatever they can to stand out. Only the buffest and toughest police foundation grads are going to be the ones getting interviews for real police jobs. Every student will do whatever they can to be seen as the buffest and toughest.

If you're going to land a gig in any regular police force in Canada, you'll be looking at a six-number annual pay within two or three years.

And if you don't, you'll be doomed to min wage security guard jobs.

Naturally, normal looking smart people are going to miss out. That's why sheer adrenalin and raw stupidity took over when our local cops had that murder suspect cornered on the GO bus last night.

Once they knew, or thought they knew, that their suspect in this murder investigation was on this bus, all they had to do was meet the bus at Union Station and quietly have a couple of officers accost him. That's how a reasonable person would have handled the situation.

But no, since this operation was in the hands of roid-addled hyper-macho crime fighters, they had to close off one of the busiest highways in Toronto, inconvenience thousands of people, endanger the lives of the other passengers on the bus, and create worldwide headlines that universally lampoon police stupidity.

It all comes down to police training.

'Cops on steroids' culture alive and well

I had no idea how old this story is. Here's Men'sHealth magazine's expose on the topic from over seven years ago.

And just a few months ago a Canadian cop pleaded to a charge of importing a half million in steroids and growth hormones from the US.

But that too was a back-burner story for me.

What's brought it front and center is some pictures Junior showed me when he was home for the holiday this past week. Pictures on his Facebook page of some of his high school buddies.

These are guys a couple of years out of high school, guys who went on to community college for the Police Foundations course. That's something aspiring cops need to take if they lack the connections that would permit good old-fashioned nepotism to get them into uniform.

These were kids I'd known when they were teens coming up. Average skinny scrawny teens. A couple of years later they look like body doubles  for the next installment of the Hulk franchise.

These scrawny kids have gotten unnaturally and suspiciously buff. It's a buff you couldn't possibly achieve with honest exercise. These are guys desperate to out-buff one another.

In this day and age the cop gig is a pretty good one. Most of the major police forces in Canada boast salaries in the range of $90,000 a year within three years of signing up. So the competition for these jobs is fierce indeed.

Part of that competitive spirit seems to have translated into buffing up by whatever means necessary to get an advantage on the next guy, and that's created an environment in the Police Foundations courses that has allowed steroid culture to flourish.

Which doesn't translate into good things happening for these guys down the road, health-wise.

Or for you, if you happen to be pulled over by some twitchy cop suffering a roid-induced mood swing.