Since 1989, the Cape Coral Police Department has been pursuing national accreditation every three years from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. Each time it has earned national accreditation.
Having recently gone through an extensive review process through the commission, the CCPD received news that it has been re-accredited.
For accreditation, agencies must comply with state-of-the-art standards in policy and procedure, administration, operations and support services. The agencies are evaluated on more than 485 individual industry standards.
In addition to being re-accredited, the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies presented the CCPD with an excellence award.
At the outset of 2011, the commission announced the establishment of a new award for agencies enrolled in accreditation programming. The intent is to offer agencies an opportunity to be further recognized for the effective use of accreditation as a model for enhanced public safety service delivery.
The criteria for the “Accreditation with Excellence Award” are:
– Demonstrated excellence in the development and implementation of contemporary policy and procedure.
– Demonstrated excellence in the ability to use the CALEA accreditation process as a tool for continuous organizational improvement.
– Demonstrated excellence in the collection, review and analysis of organizational data for the purpose of public safety service improvement.
– Demonstrated advocacy for CALEA accreditation as a strategy for enhancing the professional standing of public safety.
– Demonstrated excellence in addressing the intent of CALEA standards, beyond compliance.
– Demonstrated organizational culture supportive of CALEA accreditation.
– Accreditation assessment demonstrating standards compliance and accreditation process success.
Additionally, the agency must meet the following for consideration:
– Must have a minimum of two previous consecutive accreditation awards.
– Must not have conditions or noncompliance issues on most recent past award.
– Must not have noncompliance issues or be recommended for conditions on current assessment.
– Current assessment report must have limited file maintenance and applied discretion issues.
– Current assessment report must not have issues involving life, safety and security standards.
– Must not currently be affected by issues that detract from the tenets or goals of accreditation.
The “Accreditation with Excellence Award” attaches to the agency’s accreditation award for a period of three years. Agencies must reapply for the award each time they are assessed for re-accreditation.
Source: Cape Coral Daily Breeze, November 21, 2011