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Suppose you came home to find a burglar in your home. Quickly leaving your residence, you call law enforcement with your cell phone. Several minutes later an elderly police arrives, gets out of his car and slowly approaches you using a cane to help Fort Collins marriage counseling him walk. As he gets closer you see he's wearing hearing aids. Not exactly a confidence-builder, but this aging officer asks you if other people is in the house or if you can find any weapons in the house and where they are located. These questions seem reasonable.

Minutes later, two younger officers arrive and charge towards the house making use of their guns drawn. The elder officer stops them and tells them to go to the rear entrance of the house. As other officers arrive, the elder officer assigns them to occupy positions at home and near windows. Then gets on his bullhorn and advises the burglar the house is surrounded by police and if the burglar comes out with no weapons and hands in the air, he won't get hurt. The burglar complies. Nobody is injured and no property is stolen.

When the burglar is taken into custody, a sawed-off shotgun is located in the house. It belongs to the burglar. Now, this aging officer looks brilliant.

The Trouble with Aging

Gross motor skills peak at age 30. It's all downhill from then on; or at the very least that's what we have been generated believe.

The 5 senses do decline with age. These changes may have a good impact not merely on job performance but on satisfaction in the quality of life. Our senses inform us a great deal about the world. They grab information that's changed into nerve signals and carried to the mind where that information becomes an email we are able to understand. The starting place for the senses is stimulation, and the older a person gets, the more stimulation required for a definite message.

*Hearing and balance begin to decrease as areas of the ear lose functionality. Since the ear also affects balance, as we age balance and hearing be more difficult. High-pitched sounds are generally the first ever to deteriorate. Generally, this begins around age 50.

*Vision is afflicted with age. Essentially, it gets harder to respond to changes between light and darkness. The attention lens, which supports focus images, becomes less flexible; often requiring reading glasses. The attention muscle also loses tone, making it a bit harder to see details.

*Taste and Smell are intricately linked. Some smells have a specific amount of taste. Proper taste and smell are also safety valves - informing us about the presence of dangerous gas, smoke as well as spoiled food. Although you can find no definitive studies which suggest these 2 senses deteriorate with age, there is evidence that the amount of active preferences decrease with age.

*Touch includes the capacity to feel vibration, pressure, temperature, and pain. These abilities decrease with age.

Clearly, the senses are essential to any or all people however they play a crucial skills role with soldiers, police force officers and fire-fighters - for obvious reasons. As these critical skills diminish, the effectiveness in the field would diminish as well, at the very least for tasks which require these skills.

New Research

Current research implies that fine motor skills acquired over a very long time involve many structures in the mind, and after time those structures become "highways ".With an amateur these structures are extremely active. But as the amateur becomes a specialist, less brain activity must carry out the process. In other words, although the aging expert experiences the exact same deterioration in motor skills that the aging non-expert experiences in unrelated tasks; the aging expert retains the skills learned over a very long time through decades of practice.

This supports the primary principles that Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman put forth inside their great book - First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently.

Among other things, they assert:

*Talents are different as skill or knowledge. Talent is definitely an altogether different phenomenon.

*Every person has a "filter"; a characteristic way of responding to the entire world around him. Most of us do. Your filter tells you which stimuli to notice and which to ignore; which to love and which to hate. Everyone's filter is unique. Your filter is definitely working. Of all of the possibilities of things you might do or feel or think, your filter is consistently telling you the few things you must do, or feel, or think. Your filter, significantly more than your race, sex, age or nationality, IS you. A person's mental filter is as enduring and unique as their fingerprint.

*Neuroscience research tells us that beyond our mid-teens there is a control to how much character we are able to re-carve. This implies with regards to mental pathways, no number of training, coaching or encouragement will enable someone to turn the barren wastelands inside their brain into frictionless 4-lane highways. Beyond our mid-teens, we either contain it or we don't; whatever that will be.

*Neuroscience research confirms the filter, and that the recurring patterns of behavior the filter creates are enduring. This filtering process is what creates specific talents. You can't teach talent. It has already been there.

Additionally, new research implies that aging adults who stay socially active and engaged not merely keep their intellectual skills sharp, but their motor skills as well. This has serious implications for aging officers, who possess wisdom and skill sets that younger officers have not even acquired.

This information leads me to suggest that the aging officer, who possesses this talent that's been soaked for several decades in experience - shouldn't be encouraged to retire, be stuck into a residential area service position or relegated to desk duty. The aging officer's skill sets and talent ought to be matched with a genuine need inside their agency or department - where their primary talents and "highways" can be properly used effectively.

The Trouble with Qualifications

Theoretically, the decline in an officer's skills would first be noticed during department or agency annual qualifications. The problem is that a lot of agencies don't require qualifications that would accurately assess these skills. Most agencies do require annual shooting qualifications, but it's highly unlikely the decline in cognitive function, the senses and overall mental health will undoubtedly be discovered during a shooting qualification.

As a Utilization of Force, firearms, self defense and fighting styles instructor I have noticed that as I age my physical abilities are declining. I am much less fast as I used to be and I've lost muscle mass. It takes longer to recover from routine injuries associated using what I do. I have experienced to adjust my routines to support what is happening with my body. For the most part, what this means is a better increased exposure of stretching and cardiovascular training, and less increased exposure of strength training. Conversely, I have also realized that I am much wiser than I was at a younger age. I do not need to think much about solutions to problems which can be presented within my part of expertise. If I do have to participate in a violent encounter my assessment of behavior and range of action is quicker and surer than it was a long time ago. I am also more accurate at assessing and predicting human behavior. There is evidence of the decline in motor skills and the "highways" which can be within me.

For over two decades my primary clients were criminal justice professionals. When dealing with your various agencies I usually recommended US Supreme Court guidelines in the applying of Utilization of Force. That's, to offer initial comprehensive training accompanied by 2-year refreshers. As some of the agencies I'd initially trained asked me in the future back and conduct refresher training I began to observe that during refresher training, some aging officers were struggling and it was clear that their motor skills were deteriorating. I also noticed a number of them showing younger guys how to complete the techniques. Herein lays another exemplory case of deteriorating motor skills but enduring "highways" of knowledge and experience in aging officers.

Presumably, the standards that accompany usage of force training are a consequence of the potential liability related to officers using force. However, each agency sets its qualification standards. Generally, you can find no universal federal or state standards for agency qualifications.

A fast primer on some terms which can be frequently related to police force qualifications could be helpful.

*A Standard is a precise value established and defined by authority, custom, or common consent to serve as a reference, model, or rule in measuring quantities or qualities, establishing practices or procedures, or evaluating results. Often, standards are published in a document which has a specialized specification and other precise criteria designed to be used consistently usually, guideline or definition.

Practical example: To pass my Basic Handgun & Self Defense Course the student must score 100% on the written test and 80% or better on the shooting qualification - defined as hitting the silhouette of a target at 21 feet using a total of 20 bullets.

*A Certification is a statement that meets or will stick to certain conditions and will undertake or not undertake certain actions. Certification programs provide a method of assuring that the officer gets the characteristics or meets certain requirements contained in a standard.

Practical example: Upon successful completion of the Basic Handgun & Self Defense Course, the student receives a certificate indicating they've met those standards (in addition to a couple others). This certificate allows the student to obtain a permit to carry.

*An Accreditation is a procedure (not a statement) by which an authoritative body formally recognizes a body or person is competent to carry out specific tasks.

Practical example: At Assault Prevention, to ensure that an instructor to get accreditation they should demonstrate cognitive ability through written examinations and interviews, but they should also demonstrate motor skill competence centered on a set of standards for every single technique, and possess the capacity to teach courses centered on a learning theory model. Once these things are demonstrated successfully, the instructor receives accreditation.

Continuing education differs than the usual qualification. Qualifications are normally used to assess an officer's abilities. Shooting qualifications are almost universally used within agencies to ascertain if an officer can still shoot straight. However, shooting qualifications vary widely from basic target shooting to full blown shooting simulations - and everything in between.strong text