why choose LEPAT?

  1. No other company has more experience in the area of law enforcement-specific physical abilities standards than us.  Our roots go back to the late 1980’s with the development of the original, research-validated, job-specific physical fitness standards for the law enforcement community at large.

  2. Our research-based physical abilities standards have never faced a legal challenge in over 35 years.  We believe this is for two reasons: 1) The comprehensive job-task analyses and research methodology we use to develop our standards, and 2) the strong face validity of our standards, which intentionally exclude contentious components.  Without exception, the standards that have faced litigation within the law enforcement community over the last 2 decades have one thing in common: they lack validity by continuing to utilize contentious activities like push-ups, sit-ups,  runs, or bench presses that have no obvious connection to the duties and functions of the LEO, and have been deemed discriminatory in several court challenges.  Recent such cases include:

    1. US v. Maryland State Police (2024-2025)

    2. US v. City of South Bend IN (2024-2025 - still ongoing)

    3. US. v. Colorado Springs PD (2017)

    4. US v. Pennsylvania State Police (2014)

    5. US v. City of Eerie PA (2005)

    6. US. v. Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (1999)

  3. We have time-tested, proven research process systems in place for gathering and analyzing the required data that will build the legal foundation for your new standard, and include three types of research-validation methods: content validity, criterion validity, and construct validity. Additionally, our tests contain strong face validity - the appearance of fairness and job-relatedness to an outside observe

  4. We are the only company with the historical data from the original research-validation projects that enable us to statistically compare with current data, demonstrating the consistent, time-tested relationship of officer safety and physical fitness.

  5. No other company in this field understands the role of law enforcement officers like we do.  We’ve been there, serving as LEO’s in the field for decades, and have control-tactics and force-options expertise to ensure that invalid or inappropriate activities are kept out of our standards.

  6. No other company understands the critical importance of the relationship between officer safety and physical fitness better, because we’ve been on the street ourselves dealing with the threats to our safety.

  7. We are the only company offering a “one-stop-shop” for both the research, design, and implementation of new physical standards AND the manufacture/supply of testing components.

  8. Our testing components are extremely well built to last decades.  Much of our original equipment (supplied back in the late 1980’s and 1990’s) is still in use today.  We over-build to ensure durability and longevity.  They are intentionally designed to be portable, easy to set up, require almost no maintenance, and do not require. temperature controlled storage.  Over 200 agencies across North America utilize our testing components.

  9. We only serve the law enforcement community because we believe companies should “stay in their lane” of expertise, and law enforcement is a unique job with risks unlike any other which traditional HR companies have difficulty understanding. 

Company history

Our original company has its roots back to 1986 when exercise physiologist and then police officer, Doug Farenlholtz pioneered the development of job-related and legally defensible testing for law enforcement with the creation of the Police Officers’ Physical Abilities Test (POPAT), the Correctional Officers Physical Abilities Test (COPAT), and the Sheriffs’ Officers Physical Abilities Test (SOPAT).  These were the first research-validated, job-specific tests for law enforcement in the world and are still in use today by agencies across Canada.  Mr. Farenholz was the first to recognized the need to move away from the traditional Cooper-based testing models (1.5 mile run, push-ups, sit-ups etc) towards more job-specific models.  Many job-related physical abilities standards currently used by law enforcement agencies across the USA are based off his original research and designs. Examples include the Oregon Physical Abilities Test (ORPAT) which has since been adopted by other agencies in Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, Utah, and Nevada; the ORPAT is based off the research and design of the POPAT. 

Mr. Farenholz’s research included the first comprehensive job-task analysis of police officers which identified three components of a critical incident (or direct threat): Responding to the problem (eg. a foot-chase), resolving the problem (the physical arrest and control of a suspect), and removing the problem (the extraction of an uncooperative or incapacitated person from one area to another).  He was also the first to study and measure the physical abilities of prisoners.  Studying prisoner physical abilities defined some of the criterion validity for the standards, as the public generally expect that a police officer should be able to physically control the average suspect.  Mr. Farenholz then combined the data from that research with his expertise in exercise physiology and developed the Physical Control Machine and other testing components.  The manufacturing company he started was called PTM Equipment.

In 2006, Jeremy Lane, then a serving police sergeant (and control tactics/use-of-force instructor) with the Abbotsford PD in British Columbia, teamed up with Mr. Farenholtz and started Law Enforcement Physical Abilities Testing (LEPAT) Inc.  LEPAT offered practice and official testing (of the 4 standardized tests used in Canada) for law enforcement applicants across the country, and has been responsible for the training and certification of test administrators across Canada since 2008.

In 2013, LEPAT purchased PTM Equipment from Mr. Farenholtz and he retired. The purchase included the rights to his original research, test and equipment designs, and patents. LEPAT and PTM Equipment continued to support the law enforcement community across North America by manufacturing and supplying our standardized testing components, conducting practice and official testing, and training and certifying test administrators across the country.  We also began conducting research-validation projects for the development of new standards - primarily in the US as they began moving away from Cooper-based tests.  

In 2019, LEPAT and PTM merged into one company, retaining the rights to the original tests, research,  and equipment designs, and maintained the name Law Enforcement Physical Abilities Testing (LEPAT) Inc.  We continue to serve all branches of law enforcement in the development of legally defensible, job-related physical fitness standards and the supply/manufacture of job-related testing components.