As CALEA prepares to celebrate its twentieth anniversary in Atlanta, Georgia, in November, it can reflect with satisfaction on a legacy rich with accomplishment. The great strides of the early-to-mid 90s laid the foundation for more recent expansion and refinement of the accreditation program.
Since 1996, the Commission has focused substantial attention on outreach to the law enforcement community. It established an executive-level position,Director of Client Services,to ensure that its customers' needs would be in the forefront of daily activities and long-range planning. It created a website, www.calea.org, to enhance communications with customers and visibility in the marketplace. And, it expanded customer training opportunities to provide increased support to agencies seeking accreditation as well as those already accredited. "Our customers know that we are here to serve them," said Jim Brown, CALEA's Director of Client Services. "Perhaps that's one of the reasons why so few of our agencies dropout of the process."
Ever mindful of the need to maintain the currency of its standards and the accreditation program, CALEA recently undertook two significant development projects: the Communications Accreditation Program and the Fourth Edition of Standards for Law Enforcement Agencies. The Fourth Edition is the product of the Commission's latest standards review. A rigorous process undertaken by a committee of 31 volunteers, this comprehensive critique saw the elimination of 11 standards; the addition of 14 standards, primarily dealing with emerging technology and computers; and the modification of 111 others.
The Commission's continuing commitment to excellence also led to the formation of its communications accreditation program. Knowing the vital role that communications centers play in the delivery of law enforcement services, the Commission formed a partnership with the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials,International (APCO) to create an accreditation program that would promote superior public safety communications services. Like the law enforcement accreditationÔ program, participation is voluntary, and standards applicability is based on an agency's size and functional responsibilities. Although new, the communications accreditation program has attracted wide and diverse attention. "With the benefits of operating to national standards, verification of performance by a peer group, and enhanced confidence of the service population, who wouldn't want to participate in this accreditation program?" asks Bob Greenlaw, Director of the Northwest Bergen Central Dispatch in Ridgewood, New Jersey. His agency received the first communications accreditation award at CALEA's March 1999 meeting in Denver, Colorado.
APCO's collaboration with CALEA is not the first time an outside organization has sought a partnership with the Commission to promote accreditation, nor is it the last. In 1994, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded a five-year grant to the Center for Public Safety, Inc., to provide technical assistance and training to public housing authorities and public housing authority police, including support for CALEA accreditation. Ten public housing police departments were targeted by this grant program and, of them, seven have been accredited, including those in Baltimore City, Boston, Los Angeles, Metropolitan Cuyahoga (Cleveland), Oakland, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. An eighth department, the Buffalo Public Housing Authority Police, will be accredited by year's end.
Similarly, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno has authorized the use of asset forfeiture funds to support accreditation activities, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has reaffirmed that up to 50% of an agency's accreditation fee could be eligible for funding under Section 402 of the Highway Safety Act. Now, as this article is being written, the U.S. House of Representatives is considering the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act of 1999. If enacted as proposed, the Attorney General will be able to make grants available to law enforcement agencies seeking CALEA accreditation or reaccreditation.
With growing external support, 532 agencies accredited, increasing numbers of new customers each month, and the finances to sustain and expand operations, CALEA is well positioned for many more years of making a difference in the quality and continuity of law enforcement services. Already its accreditation program has touched 20% of the full-time law enforcement officers serving at the local, county, and state levels in the United States, as well as 10% of regional and provincial officers in Canada.
So, what does the future hold?
A key priority for CALEA in the coming year will be to strengthen its relationship with the 11 state accreditation programs. "Clearly, there's an untapped market out there," said the Commission's Executive Director, Sylvester Daughtry, former Greensboro, North Carolina, Chief of Police. "State programs have been better able to reach the smaller agencies than we have, but our program is still viewed by most as being the 'golden ring," he continued. "We want to develop a partnership with state accreditation programs so that agencies can progress from state accreditation to CALEA accreditation."
To that end, the Commission has established a State Programs Committee and charged it with developing a business plan for presentation and possible adoption at its November meeting in Atlanta. Goals of the plan will be to acknowledge the efforts of state accreditation programs; to ensure the use of a uniform set of standards across accreditation programs; to form a fiduciary relationship between the state programs and CALEA and to formalize CALEA's role in the research, development, and ownership of the standards.
CALEA is also looking outside the United States and considering how its program might be useful to emerging nations as they establish their law enforcement functions. Said Commission Chairman, Bill Miller, "Our standards deal with the range of critical law enforcement issues,from use of force to training to ethics to personnel selection to prisoners and holding facilities. So, there are many opportunities for accreditation to be a positive influence. We're going to be talking with the State Department, United Nations, and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to see what we can do."
Finally, to ensure that the drive, accomplishments, and lessons learned in the past two decades are not defeated in the next, the Commission will be launching a major strategic planning initiative at its upcoming meeting in Atlanta. "We'll be celebrating where we've been and preparing for where we want to go,defining our focus and priorities, setting our goals and milestones, and identifying necessary resources. We want to have a roadmap, like any business, so we don't get off track," said Executive Director Daughtry. How fitting that this plenary process and the Commission's twentieth anniversary will coincide in Atlanta. That's where the first of the original accreditation standards were adopted in September 1980.
