NAKHON RATCHASIMA — Porky policemen will be forced to work off their accumulated stores of bubble tea and durian at a special belly-adjustment camp after the program was declared a success, a police trainer said Tuesday.

Overweight cops nationwide will periodically be sent to the Central Police Training Center in the central city of Pak Chong for two weeks of intense diet and exercise as part of a program to slim down the nation’s gendarmes.

“There are so many problems if you’re a fat cop. You work slow and move slow as you go tumbling about. That’s unacceptable if you’re an officer tasked with arresting criminals, since you have to be deft and go quickly,” said Senior Sgt. Maj. Sornpetch Chantarak, a dietary enforcer in the new program.

About 200 policemen participated in a two-week pilot of the “Belly Destruction” program that ended earlier this month. Sornpetch said some cops weighing 80 kilograms got down to 60, while others weighing in at 200 shed upward of 60 kilos of chub.

Police stations nationwide will nominate two to three of their fattest cops to participate in the program at a time.

Sornpetch said most fat policemen are otherwise consigned to doing paperwork.

“Mostly they’re in charge of filing records. They also don’t exercise, or eat too richly and too much,” he said, laughing.

Excessively fat and salty foods as well as increasingly sedentary lifestyles have been blamed for the rise in obesity among children, adults and monks.

Sornpetch said officers have to exercise every day in the camp and join activities such as biking and working out while eating filling, protein-heavy foods. They even have ID cards that record their weights before and after, he said.

Although the camp started a month ago, word spread online Tuesday, with images posted on the Love Police Facebook page greeted by amused netizens.

“It’s good you’re losing some. I always see cops chugging beer while patrolling. How are you supposed to catch criminals like that?” wrote user Attakorn Elle.

Sornpetch sounded visibly excited that camp photos went viral. He said he’s looking forward to the next batch of corpulent cops.

“They call me Senior Sgt. Maj. Petch,” he said. “And I’ll train them myself!”

Related stories:

1 in 10 Thai Children Overweight: HealthMin

New Labels and Tax Take on Thailand’s Junk Food Problem

Please Don’t Feed Junk to Chunky Monks: HealthMin