Lowering the fitness bar for Hong Kong's new police recruits: no more sit-ups or pull-ups for the Internet generation
Potential police recruits will be asked to do less strenuous exercises to make the grade, the first time in 35 years standards have been lowered
For the first time in 35 years, the police have lowered the physical standards for new recruits, a move that observers say reflects a drop in the fitness levels of officers - and the general population - in the past few years.
The new tests start this month. It means that all would-be police officers heading to next Saturday's recruitment day probably won't run out of breath as they will be asked to sprint much shorter distances and there will be no more sit-ups, pull-ups or squat thrusts.
The changes start in the same month that the force launched its first Facebook page, in what many view as a concerted effort to regain the public's trust after the controversial handling of last year's Occupy protests.
A police spokeswoman denied the easier tests were to widen the talent pool, and that the changes had been more than six years in the making after a review was launched in 2009.
However, a former Hong Kong police inspector, who now teaches criminal justice at an American university, had a different view.
"The general fitness of the Hong Kong population is decreasing," said Professor Wong Kam-chow from the department of criminal justice at Xavier University in Ohio.
