male officer shaking hands with female trainee

Awards

Cotter Award

The James V. Cotter Award is for Chief Executive Officers who have successfully brought three or more new law enforcement agencies into CALEA Accredited status.
Jim Cotter, who came to CALEA in 1980 as the first Executive Director, is credited with having the foresight and diplomatic skills to form the coalitions that developed the standards, bylaws, and procedures that evolved into the current Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc. Mr. Cotter died in December 2008.

CALEA congratulates and appreciates award recipients for their hard work and dedication to professionalism in law enforcement.

 

APPLICATION REQUIRED 

Egon Bittner Award

The Egon Bittner Award is presented to Chief Executive Officers who have commanded a CALEA Accredited agency for fifteen or more continuous years. It was created to recognize these leaders for their significant contributions to the public safety profession and to CALEA.

Professor Egon Bittner greatly contributed to CALEA’s early development in 1979-80, and was a CALEA Commissioner from 1981, during the critical developmental stage of the organization, through 1988.

Dr. Bittner brought wisdom and expertise to CALEA’s deliberations. He was Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, with a national standing on law enforcement issues. He retired from Brandeis in 1991 and then moved with his wife, Jean, to the California Bay Area. He died there on May 7, 2011.

In celebration of CALEA’s 30th Anniversary in 2009, the CALEA

 

APPLICATION REQUIRED 

President's Award

President’s Award was developed to recognize select individuals and/or organizations for their continuing support of CALEA accreditation as a professional institution in the field of public safety.

This award will be used to recognize those individuals or entities that have made significant contributions to the advancement of accreditation across the public safety profession.

Meritorious Award

CALEA accredited agencies are recognized for having been accredited for 15 or more continuous years. These agencies receive an enhanced Certificate of Meritorious Accreditation, displaying a blue “Meritorious” ribbon and an inscription proclaiming their 15 or more years of accredited status.

Excellence Award

The intent of the CALEA® Accreditation with Excellence Award is to provide agencies an opportunity to be further recognized for the effective use of accreditation as a model for the delivery of enhanced public safety services and management professionalism, including:

  • Progressive community engagement strategies
  • Data as a structured tool for business decisions
  • Repeated and progressive use of accreditation model for outcomes management and benchmarking
  • Leadership status among peer agencies as an accredited organization

Criteria for the CALEA Accreditation with Excellence Award:

  • Must have a minimum of two previous consecutive CALEA Accreditation awards under Advanced Law Enforcement Accreditation, Public Safety Communications, Public Safety Training Academy, or Campus Security Program.
  • Must remit all Annual Status Reports on or before the agency award date.
  • No extensions to any of the four annual Remote Web-Based Assessments.
  • No conditions placed on the agency resulting from the current or previous assessment.
  • At the end of the assessment cycle, the agency must be in compliance with 95 percent (without rounding) or greater of all applicable other-than-mandatory standards, verified after review of the approved agency assessment report. 
  • The current Assessment Report, which contains information from the annual compliance reviews during that cycle, must not have “standards issues” of a noncompliance nature and no more than two “standards issues”, not constituting non-compliance.
  • The agency must comply with the other-than-mandatory Community/Student Survey standard in the program (LE Standard 45.2.2, Comm. Standard 2.6.5, TA Standard 7.1.1 or CS Standard 23.2.4).
  • The agency must remit all requested data table information within CIMRS report unless otherwise prohibited by law.  
  • Must not be operating under any active Federal Consent Decree or Memorandum of Understanding, or state-level complementary action.   
  • Must not currently be affected by issues that detract from the overall tenets or goals of CALEA Accreditation.
  • Must receive unanimous support from the assigned CALEA Review Committee and then a motion/second from a quorum of CALEA Commissioners.

The Excellence Award will be determined by the Commission and will be announced during the CALEA Awards Banquet. 

 

CALEA Tri Arc Award