The group of young people standing outside the Griffith Family YMCA classroom talked strategy Sunday morning as the officers who had just interviewed them discussed whether those strategies worked.

One young man was concerned that he hadn’t made enough eye contact with the mock panel — among them Griffith police Chief Greg Mance — while a second worried that he gave too much eye contact and appeared too intense. A third young man hoped he’d found the Goldilocks sweet spot.

“I made sure to look at whoever was talking to show that I was interested in what they were saying,” he told his peers before Mance came out and called them back in for a critique and encouragement.

The four of them, along with 17 other young men and women, spent the morning doing the bookwork portion of the Griffith Police Department’s Police Candidate Training Course, showing off their interviewing skills as well as seeing what the police exam looks like.

The police candidate training Workshop was co-sponsored by Indiana University Northwest, in conjunction with the Griffith, Crown Point, Munster and Valparaiso police departments.

The afternoon, however, brought the pain: The potential candidates took the five physical fitness tests they would have to take during the application process to join a department.While those tests might seem pedestrian — the best of three vertical jumps of at least 13.5 inches above a candidate’s reach, 24 situps, 21 pushups, and a 300-meter and mile run — if they’re not done in a specific way, a candidate will be disqualified from the interview process, said Carl Zurbriggen, group vice president for Crossroads YMCA and program partner.

“The vertical leap, for example, has to be done from a standing position — meaning they can’t get a running start — so if they miss a vertical leap by even a half-inch, they’re out,” Zurbriggen said. “Our job here is to take them through the exercises and show them what to expect, because you might think you know how to do 21 pushups, but the departments expect something different.”

As a bonus, Crossroads then provides the candidates with a three-month membership to their local Y branch to keep working on their skills, Zurbriggen said.

Mance came up with the training program shortly after he became Griffith’s chief in 2013, he said. He, like other chiefs in many of the other departments in Northwest Indiana, discovered that the applicants he had were primarily white men.

“We really lacked diversity, and then we had a lot of retirements at the same time, so we wanted to attract more diverse candidates,” Mance said. “We wanted to figure out a way to give all candidates an equal level of success, so I talked to one of my former professors — Ellen Szarleta of the Center for Urban and Regional Excellence — and she, Carl and I came up with this strategy workshop.”

Its pilot run was an immediate success, with Griffith hiring its second ever woman officer, Leslie Malerich, he said. As well, a recent survey he had to fill out for the state shows that the Griffith Police Department has two women, several officers who identify as bi- or multiracial and “two or three Hispanic” officers, he said.

“The sheer number of minority and women candidates was phenomenal,” he said. “And even if they ended up not getting hired by us, many went on and got hired by ISP (Indiana State Police) or other departments, so it was good to see they achieved that success.”

Sunday’s class size — the workshop has been held every two years, with a year off during the pandemic — was much smaller than they’ve had, and Mance agreed that the number correlates with the waning interest of law enforcement as a career. Still, there was a nice sampling of people that deserve every shot of getting into law enforcement if that’s what they want.

“You hate to lose a great officer because they miss a jump by half an inch,” Mance said. “The state has important, attainable standards, and we want to help people get there.”

Jarod Devon, 22, of St. John, waited patiently for his interviewers to come out after his morning mock interview. He originally thought it was going to be a one-on-one, so when he saw the panel, he kind of froze.

“I’m not really good with communicating, but I did ask some good questions,” he said. “I work in armed security right now, so definitely want this to be my career.”

After his debrief, he felt a lot better.

“They said I need to be more outgoing and more enthusiastic in myself,” Devon, who’s always wanted to be an officer, said.

Mance said that if the interest is there, there could be another workshop in 2024, so those interested in becoming an officer can email him at gmance@griffith.in.gov or follow any local police department’s social media pages for announcements.

Michelle L. Quinn is a freelancer.