ASU Police Department accredited for 5th consecutive time

The Arizona State University Police Department recently was awarded advanced accreditation status by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA).

The advanced accreditation status is the ASU Police Department’s fifth, consecutive CALEA award, which is in effect until November 2014. The ASU Police Department is one of a select few Arizona agencies to achieve advanced accreditation status.

CALEA recently introduced a tiered law enforcement accreditation model to advance its mission of ensuring the highest standards and best practices in public safety. To reach accreditation status, law enforcement agencies must comply with 190 standards. Advanced accreditation may be achieved by police agencies that comply with 480 standards, including 15 new standards specific to campus policing. The new process focuses on agency practices with assessors interacting with approximately half of the 141 department employees and many faculty, staff and students.

“Because of the ASU Police Department’s commitment to excellence, we were asked to be a test site for the new onsite process, now known as the Gold Standard Assessment,” said John Pickens, chief of the ASU Police Department. “I’m proud of the consistently high rankings that the department has earned through the years – including as a Flagship Agency – and also of the hard work that ASU Police Department personnel put in every day.”

The department has been accredited since 1997, and continuing accreditation represents the satisfactory completion of a continuous process of thorough agency wide self-evaluation, concluded by an exacting outside review by independent assessors. It also represents the agency's ongoing quest for professional excellence through professional standards in policy and practice.

CALEA is the most widely recognized accrediting body in public safety. The non-profit organization improves the delivery of public-safety services by maintaining a best-in-class body of standards that was developed by a highly regarded group of public-safety practitioners. CALEA established and administers their accreditation process and recognizes professional excellence through a comprehensive awards program.

Throughout the nation, 55 university and college law enforcement agencies currently are accredited by CALEA.

Additional information is available at http://cfo.asu.edu/police and http://www.calea.org.