Arkitech, honestly it depends on your area.
If it's an area with a high turnover, then you have a better chance of becoming an officer there because people are always leaving. However, this usually only happens in the more urban areas, and is normally worse pay/benefits and a higher rate of violent crime.
If it's a nice suburb, you will have a harder time getting a job there. You need to go through the academy and training, and it will be several months before you go out in the field as a full-fledged officer. I believe most departments pay you as a full-fledged officer during training though.
Also, it depends on how often the tests are. In my hometown, the next test is in June of 2006 I believe.
As far as physical requirements, if you're in decent physical shape you should be alright. It wouldn't hurt doing some endurance training, but it shouldn't be absolutely neccessary. You will probably have trouble with it though. Try to find out how hard the PT part of the the training is from people in your area. For city cops it wasn't nearly as bad as my county's PT, which is actually pretty hard for the majority of people unless you're in very good shape.
There are probably a various assortment of situations you'll run into. Domestic violence, underage drinking, noise complaints, fights, etc. Normal small-town crime. However if you were in my old suburb you'd be graced with having to deal with sexual predators, people having arsenals (read: grenades, land mines, a rocket launcher, various automatic weapons, various semi-automatic rifles and hand-guns) in their basements, murders because of jealousy and/or alzheimers, drug overdoses and an assortment of other things. Did I mention this is within a 5 block radius of my house?
