How old is too old to get into LE?

C Walley

Amateur
Had a guy in my academy class that was 52. His age (or anything else for that matter) did not slow him down one bit.
 

Vechter

Newbie
A lot of the problems we see with younger recruits such as those right out of college or such, are that they lack rear wold life experience. It's been my experience that your age range usually excels in the training process due to more maturity and life experiences. Out of curiosity, where in the US are you looking PNW, SW, East Coast, ect?
 

bigfug

Amateur
if you gotta ask then you’re too old... I started at 28 almost 29 myself. I’ve been in going on 5 years now. Like most have stated getting in sooner would have been great especially on the retirement side but unless a dept has an age cap any age where you can safely meet the requirements of your duty station is a good age. I had a guy in my academy who had already been a state trooper for 20 years in a different state, took 5 years off couldn’t handle sitting at home so when he moved to Oklahoma he got back into LE. Only reason he had to go back and finish with another class was because he had a major family crisis that took him outta classes longer than he could be to successfully meet requirements, and while in DT he pulled something in his back. This man was HARD... and in his mid to late 60’s

What dept?
 

pointblank4445

Established
We just had a guy (50+) get hired and injured himself training for the state-mandated PT requirements. He was out several months but our HR..."redshirted" him and held is place and we remained without his spot filled. When he was healthy, he went to the academy and injured himself permanently on day 2 doing the PT requirements.

Like Indy said, "It's not the age, it's the mileage." I can say without a doubt, that dude's odometer is well past the mark for entering LE.
 

MuskokaJoe

Newbie
I was 21 when I was hired. Although it was predomenantly a young class at the time (I'd say the average age was 24-26) we had a few in my intake that were in their late 40's... All the Services in the Province train their recruits together here at a centralized College (like an Academy). My intake had somewhere around 400 recruits and was considered a very large class.
 
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