Do you have what it takes to be a police officer?

It takes strength, not just in physicality, but in mindfulness and emotion as well. You have to be well rounded, have a thick skin and present leadership and quick thinking skills and abilities.

That could help get you in the door but executing those skills will help even more.

So, do you have what it takes?

Police Chiefs in Ocean County are watching and, in the present, accepting applications for you to try and join their ranks.

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The Ocean County Chiefs of Police Association is hosting an entry level Police Test this month as Chiefs from across Ocean County look to hire full-time and SLEO Class II police officers and alternate route candidates.

The written exam will take place on August 17 then on August 30/31 a physical assessment test will take place where you'll need to perform well doing push-ups, sit-ups, vertical jump, 300-meter run and a 1.5-mile run.

If your results are good enough on both the physical and written exams, you'll be a step closer to a job.

"Based on your results from the written and PT test, you'll be ranked and put on a list that'll be sent out to all Ocean County Police Departments that are looking to hire those candidates," Joseph Michigan, President of the Ocean County Chiefs of Police Association and Point Pleasant Beach Police Chief, tells Townsquare Media News.

Depending on the town, city, borough, every police department has different needs whether that's more officers during the summer season or year round and on the size of their municipality with how much area they have to cover.

"We hire a lot of Class II officers each year," Chief Michigan said. "I'm looking to put about 40 Class II officers in the Police Academy for next summer's season."

For boroughs like Point Pleasant Beach along the shoreline or other towns as well, the applicants who pass the tests and complete the academy will be able to get to work and become a big part of helping each department and serving their community.

"This test and the results that we get is going to assist us in filling police academies that are coming up in September, October and even as late as November of this year," Chief Michigan said.

Think of the upcoming written and physical assessment tests as the NFL Combine, you have a chance to come in, show what you can do and then get put on a list where any one of the police chiefs in Ocean County can go to and look to bring you and perhaps several others into their department over the next few months.

The results will be tallied up and you'll be ranked on this list which is good from September 2021 to September 2022.

If you're a candidate a particular department has interest in, you'll find out soon enough.

"We'll reach out to those candidates or we'll put out a mass-email saying 'Point Pleasant Beach is hiring' to the list of candidates from this list that's generated and then they would submit their resumes and letters of interest," Chief Michigan said.

The list will be available to all Ocean County police departments, so if one is interested in you or they wish to announce to the candidates on the list, you'll get an email or notice announcing the hiring and then you just submit the paperwork and such.

"If a police department is looking for officers, they don't have to do their own type of recruitment, they can just go to this county list that we have," Chief Michigan said. "It's a great tool from a police chiefs standpoint and really, it's beneficial to the applicant as well."

You'll then have to go through an additional hiring process that will include a physical with a doctor, a psychological stress test and a background investigation.

Police Chiefs are looking for certain physical skills, yes, but also what you're made of on the inside.

"Certainly we want that well rounded individual, somebody who obviously has some life experience, can make common sense decisions," Chief Michigan said. "We're looking for people that maybe have some experience out of high school and maybe they went into the military, they've gone to college...not necessarily looking for someone right out of high school but there is certainly some candidates out there who are well rounded enough to handle the pressures of law enforcement. We've seen a lot of applicants, 23/24 year olds who've gone to college, they've had some military and life experience, they're committed, hard working, dedicated. This is a grueling job, it's very demanding and you have to be a very well rounded individual to handle the jobs of law enforcement."

If you're interested in taking the tests and becoming a police officer in Ocean County, just head to police app.com and fill out the forms.

The deadline to apply is August 14.

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