Law Enforcement Accreditation

In our state, the POST Commission mandates higher standards anyway. The only agencies I am personally familiar with that went CALEA were ones that at the time couldn't get POST certification.

 

CALEA

Just FYI. CALEA also helps to reduce an LE agency's liability insurance by having a third party regularly 'examine' the practices of the department. \\

Accreditation is in a number of professional fields apart from education. In education, it is 'voluntary' for a school to seek accreditation, as is the CALEA accreditation. The difference being that CALEA is supposed to focus on quality assurance, whereas educational accreditation primarily forcuses on the school being capable of accounting for and receiving federal funds. It is rare to hear of a school loosing accreditation because their students didn't learn what they were supposed to learn. But, educational accreditors take action quite quickly if the school has a financial problem. CALEA removes accredition for lack of quality in outputs.


Just a side not. if accreditation was not tied to the recipient of Federal Funds, I would bet most schools wouldn't bother with the regional accreditors.

 

Re: CALEA

We're self-insured, as are most larger law enforcement agencies, so that benefit is out the window.

Other than being able to put that ugly CALEA sticker on all your cruisers, I'm still unconvinced that CALEA accreditation has any benefits whatsoever to the cop on the street.

 

You mean it's LEGAL to be running an UNACCREDITED law enforcement agency? What ever would the people think if only they knew?

 

On the other hand is CALEA a RECOGNIZED accrediting agency or a BOGUS accrediting agency?

 

Yes. In short, it is legal as long as you comply with state law.

Recall, if you will, that there are accreditations for numerous professional organizations: not just LE and education, engineer, legal, medical etc - which have little at all to do with the US Department of Education's accreditation process for receiving federal funds. The other accreditors would be termed as fraudulant by the standards on this Discussion Board as they are not recognized by the USDoE nor CHEA. However, in their own fields, they may be the best being offered even though there is no federal recognition of them. An why would there be? There are no federal funds at risk.

 

I believe that DSDoE and CHEA recognition is only a relevant consideration for accreditation agencies that accredit academic institutions.

 

What I want to know is whether two cops from different agencies would argue about who is an ACCREDITED cop and who is an UNACCREDITED cop.

 

Re: Re: CALEA

I agree with Bruce.

I believe CALEA accreditation means nothing to the cop on the street as well. It is a waste of a budgetary allocation that could be better used for necessary equipment for the officers.

 

My agency was formerly accredited and has recently decided not to go for reaccreditation. I think there is some benefit to it in terms of public confidence, but it does not outweigh the cost. We recenlty had a selection process for a new chief and in the public forum not one officer raised there hand to say they were supporters of accreditation. It can be useful but they need to find a more efficient cost effective way to achieve it.

 

Agreed.
To the cop on the street there is no benefit.
To the admin with money to spend on public relations there could be a benefit in public perception, however, there are better ways to spend the money.