Sitting behind a Beaverton Police car on my way to work this morning, I saw this printed on the bumper:
Accredited in 1995, 2000
I checked out their website, but this explanation doesn’t mean much to me, and in fact adds to my confusion. Why was it reaccredited in the same year it was accredited? Why no mention of 2000? Did they lose their accreditation for five years, get it back, then lose it again? And now apparently there’s some better accreditation that they got in 2005 - why not put that on the bumper?
But my major point is…who cares? This seems rather industry-internal to place on the bumper. It would be like putting “Member USCAAS 1992, local OR 404” on an ambulance. Are they simply taunting other police forces who didn’t get their accreditation?
don’t know about the dates, but the accreditation is (should be) important to the public as well as the police force. It shows that the department has exceeded the minimum standards and demonstrates that it meets higher goals in operations and structure. I am not an expert, but our local police department received it’s accreditation a few years ago and not only were they pleased, other police in the area that I talked to were impressed. Not in awe or anything, but it is a worthy goal to achieve. Costs $ to get there though.
Accreditation is a major indicator of professionalism for a law enforcement agency. Accreditation through CALEA requires policy and actual procedures be “best practices” and constitutional. Subsequently, the department’s actions are far less actionable. It appears that Beaverton PD gained a lesser accreditation in 1995 and then accreditation with CALEA in 2005.
The CALEA standards are very demanding and the audits are very intensive. I was involved in the TRIPLE accreditation, law enforcement, detention and medical, of the department from which I retired.
There’s a fair amount of debate over how valuable accreditation from the CAAS is, but every ambulance service I know of that has it has a big old sticker on the back door announcing it.