GREENSBORO, N.C. — Accreditation is a word you heard a whole lot about this past month as Bennett college raised funds to keep their accreditation. But it’s not just colleges that can get accreditation. The Guilford County Sheriff’s office is in the process of becoming accredited. 2 Wants To Know’s Ben Briscoe is digging into what that means for you.
Training would be required under accreditation for everything from when is it okay to chase a suspect to when is it okay to use lethal force. Accreditation would also mean independent auditors would come in to make sure that training was done.
New Guilford County Sheriff Danny Rodgers is pushing for accreditation, even mentioning it as a top priority on the Good Morning Show the day after winning the election.
“Being accredited would help us be overseen,” Rodgers said. “I don’t have a problem with people overseeing me and the agency we’re running.”
Accreditation is given out by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies. 58 police departments and six sheriff offices have it in North Carolina. That includes the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office which has been accredited for almost a decade.
“It means we hold ourselves accountable to a higher standard,” said Karen Long of the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office Accreditation Department. “We believe so much in what we do here as an agency that we are willing and encourage independent auditors to come in and review what we do.”
It also forces the agency to pull together plans for just about every imaginable situation from how to respond to citizen complaints to establishing the chain of custody for evidence.
One of the arguments against accreditation has been that the Triad is not the same as Chicago or New York City, and we should haven’t to have to same policies. But Forsyth says that’s never been a concern for them.
“What CALEA does is tells us you need to consider a situation and have a policy on it. They don’t tell us what he policy needs to be,” Long said.
In fact, they like being able to pick the brains of an expert that knows the best practices of other agencies across our state and the nation.
There is a fee to be accredited. And it’s different for every agency depending on their size. CALEA also says agencies should expect to hire a staff member to manage the program and
“Initially there could be cost associated with training. A lot of the standards require training they have not done in the past,” said Laura Saunders with CALEA. “Maybe they need equipment to do the training.”
