ACCREDITATION WORKS

Case Number 57   

CALEA Law Enforcement Accreditation is a desirable achievement for agencies of all sizes. The Findlay Township (PA) Police Department has been CALEA Accredited since 1993, and is one of CALEA’s 26 “A-size” accredited law enforcement agencies (24 members – 17 sworn, 7 civilian). Like much larger agencies, we also realize numerous benefits, both tangible and intangible, as a result of achieving and maintaining our accredited status. Speaking as a chief and as a CALEA Assessor of more than 10 years, I find it is simply not possible to enter the accreditation process and not be a better and more professional agency upon completing the program. 

When our department began the process, the comprehensive nature of the accreditation standards forced us to address a number of seemingly minor issues, that had previously been pushed to the back burner, such as auditing our informant funds, creating formal task analyses for each function assignment, and creating annual reports analyzing sensitive or liability-prone occurrences regarding pursuits, use of force, bias based profiling, etc. The administrative and operational improvements we realized by aggressively addressing these issues and publicly releasing that information, have led to an increased level of trust that our department is functioning professionally.   

As a result of gaining CALEA Accreditation, our insurance rating increased to a “most favorable” rate status, resulting in an immediate reduction of approximately 10% in our insurance premium. This cost savings continues each year that we are accredited — a savings of over $1,800 in 2006. Furthermore, our accredited status has allowed us to point to staffing and response standards during our budget hearings to support our personnel and equipment needs and requests.     

Accreditation has also enabled us to better defend ourselves when false liability claims have been made against the department alleging Fourth Amendment violations, failing to train, failing to supervise, and other civil rights violations.  Personnel issues are less contentious, in that documented accountability for all written directives and training is irrefutable, thus eliminating any claims that a member did not know about a particular directive, requirement, or obligation.   

An example of an intangible benefit of accreditation, since our initial accreditation and subsequent reaccreditations, is that our department’s public relations and image has steadily improved. Our most recent Citizen Survey indicated approval ratings of 52.59% as excellent, 34.07 % as very good, and 9.63% as good. Additionally, we have attracted a number of job applicants from other agencies, who have advised us during the interview process that our status and reputation as an accredited department was an influencing factor leading them to apply for a position with our agency, which has resulted in a higher quality applicant pool.   

We take great pride in advising the members of our community that the Findlay Township Police Department is performing professionally and is operating in accordance with the highest standards promulgated within the law enforcement community. It is significantly more credible when a team of independent outside CALEA-trained assessors verifies that claim and CALEA awards our department an Accreditation Certificate. 

Paul C. Wilks, Chief of Police

Findlay Township (PA) Police Department

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