I have a friend who is training to be a detective in a police academy, I prefer not to mention where.

Their training routine it's kinda whacko. For what I've been reading on this board and other websites, you should at least take a day off from training a specific muscle group, specially if you worked it to exhaustion.

Is it really recommended to run 50 laps everyday, work their upper bodies everyday and essentially suffer through pain to be good and conditioned cops?

I understand their jobs is harsh, but it concerns me that eventually this training routine will make them fail instead of pulling the best out of them.

I remember him mentioning that one of the rookies made a stupid comment during training and the trainer in charge made them climb 9 floors on their knees. I mean, there were ex marines literally crying during this sadomasochist session. What if next day there was a big emergency and they couldn't attend because their knees is all messed up?

Sounds to me they are being trained by a bunch of idiots who are more interested of showing authority than doing a good job in providing us with mentally and physically fit officers.

This is *NOT* the way to get fit. It is more of a mental game at that point and pushing your body way past what it should do. The recruits will lose weight and strength, but the idea is to get past any mental blocks and prove that they can do it.

With that said, if the ex-marines thought it was off the chart bad they probably didn't do it correctly. This is not a good program.

These types of "training" are more exercises in measuring an individuals mental (intenstonal?) fortitude, not a realistic means of increasing ones physical fitness. Many military, police and sports team training sessions start with these kind of brutal tests to "weed" out the less prepared or capable. One can reasonably argue that these may be less than optimal ways of determining ones ability to perform certain activities, and many often go too far and result in permanant injury or death to the "trainees". On the other hand some argue that these programs weed out the weak who would otherwise get themselves or others killed in "real" stress situations or would compromise the abilty of the "team" to perform their "mission". And, of course, you can not neglect the team comraderie that comes from knowing everyone on the team has endured this same "initiation" rite. Obviously, many fraternities and other organizations have toned down their "initiation" rites, especially where these activities had no reasonable bearing on the function of the organization. Some of the more brutal aspects of the sessions tend to increase over time as the new trainers try to insure that the new trainees sufer as much as they did and even think up new ways to be more cruel, until some critical event causes some outside group to step in and tone them down.
The examples of serious maiming and death from initial indoctrination sessions are in the news often. When I was in Marine Corps boot camp in the 1970's, one of the other individuals in my platoon keeled over and died in the middle of a training session, presumably from heat stroke. I don't know if that is the norm in the first weeks of military training or not. A couple of years ago, several Massachusetts State Trooper trainees died from kidney failure after being denied fluids during a strenuous training session. I believe that entire training program was very seriously re-evaluated after that incident. A few pro atheletes have expired during pre-season training in the last couple of years as well. Certainly, given the oportunity for serious injury or death, any training activity needs to be conducted with a certain degree of caution, hopefully by well trained and intentioned trainers, and scripted to derive the maximum benefit for the activity it is screening and preparing the trainees for. The lack of qualified, trained, well supervised, well lead, and well intentioned trainers can result in a less than optimal outcome.

So they weed out the weak ones by diminishing their capacity of to get the best performance out of training?

I talked to my friend, and apparently some real pieces of work still remain on the force (his partner didn't help him on a pretty greasy situation and justified himself with some BS) , while some others who couldn't catch up physically were left out. However, this process sounds really ineffective, since good performance, comes from proper training.

How about getting them fit first and them putting them through intensive psychological and physical evaluation?