The Fayetteville Police Department Commission On Accreditation For Law Enforcement Agencies Essay

Police brutality in the U.S. has been a phenomenon that has caught international attention in the last few years. As defined in thelawdictionary.org, police brutality is “the use of excessive and/or unnecessary force by police when dealing with civilians.” In many cases, civilians that were law-abiding and even unarmed were victims of police using unjustifiable force upon them. While independent organizations and activists have tried to eradicate this unacceptable behavior and phenomenon through protests and demonstrations, their efforts have not been enough. If law enforcement agencies, such as local police departments, educate their employees on the right and wrong ways to behave on the streets with civilians, the root cause of the problem will be addressed.

Georgia was not unlike most states in her slow progress towards regulating policing standards and recruitment but liberal regions of the nation, like New York and California, were paving the way for professional attitudes toward policing by enforcing more extensive and comprehensive police recruitment standards. Gourley emphasized the need for regulation and professionalism in policing by comparing law enforcement to other highly skilled careers:

If there was a national certification program that certified police agencies to have a regulatory compliance certification and training in the use of force in the United States, it would minimize the number of cases of or deter the use of excessive force in America. This is demonstrated by the progress made various police agencies across about minimizing and deterring excessive use of force by their officers. The Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) and the New York Police Department (NYPD) are examples of police departments which have registered significant progress after taking measures to minimize or deter the excessive use of force.

Conover Police Department is devised of 27 full time Officers, three part time officers and two non-sworn positions; one as the administrative assistance and one as the code enforcement officer. Conover is a city in Catawba County, North Carolina. The population was 8,165 in the 2010 census, with an estimated population of 8,236 in 2013, making Conover the fastest growing City in the Hickory Metro Area. According to the United States Census Bureau, the City of Conover has a total area of 10.845 square miles, all of it being land.

Maryland one of greatest states on the eastern coast of the United States is currently experiencing a high demand for police officers. This is especially true in Baltimore one of the largest cities in the state of Maryland and continues to grow. Police officers and law enforcement professionals have to be thoroughly equipped to handle the stress of law enforcement work on a day to day basis. As a result, the state of Maryland has put into place high standards for those interested in working in law enforcement.

CALEA or the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies is an accrediting body which law enforcement agencies may voluntarily submit an application to for membership and accreditation. The “accreditation program provides public safety agencies an opportunity to voluntarily demonstrate that they meet an established set of professional standards” (Law Enforcement Accreditation, n.d.). Membership in CALEA requires that the applying agency successfully completes the application process meeting all required standards and “80 percent of the non-prescribed regulations“ (Doerner, 2012) or electives. Once an agency’s completed application has been submitted and fees paid, a CALEA assessment team is dispatched to the agency for a site visit and a final report is submitted to the commission for recommendation (Doerner, 2012). If approved, the agency is accredited and receives “professional recognition for an initial 5-year term after which it must re-file to maintain

Definitions For the purpose of this paper, the title of law enforcement officers means, any officer authorized and accredited by a government. In America, for example, this includes federal, state, and local authorities that have been authorized and accredited by an agency with the authority of the American government. Some individuals will refer to law enforcement officers as cops, officers, and police, and occasional slang terms like, “po-po’s.” In the United Kingdom, for example, some of the official titles include, Civil Enforcement Officer and Traffic Officer and occasional slang terms like, “peelers.” When discussing to monitor officers, this would mean to oversee individual officers' actions in order to assure his/her compliance with the law set forth by a government.

Most departments now meet standards by accrediting the department. The Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies known as CALEA is a private non-profit corporation formed by major law enforcement executives' associations to acquire standards for police policies and practices. It is up the police departments if they

The agency I chose to visit was Cobb County police headquarter. I had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with Sergeant Dana Pierce, who is in charge of Public information, and does Crime prevention as well. Sergeant Pierce has been working for Cobb County for 25 years but he has been working since 1991, 36 years in the Criminal Justice system in total. At first Mr. Pierce was in college with a baseball scholarship which was great but he knew that he wasn’t going to go pro so he started to make some changes in his major. He always followed the law and so thought that Law enforcement was the job right for him.

Civilian oversight of law enforcement is a vital element of the democratic society. Effective civilian oversight of police is crucial to guarantee that the police use its power of authority in a way that exhibits respect for the law and individual rights and freedoms. The committee’s responsibility is to maintain a balance between police independence and to complete investigations and maintain order without undue political influence, or influence from any other source while remaining accountable to the public. The belief that civilians do not understand what a police officer faces on a daily basis becomes the crux of most complaints made by

The policies and procedures of the police department are developed under the direction of the Chief. In the past, the Chief personally wrote most of the policies. Currently, the department does not have a Chief and the department is operating with the patrol captain as Interim Chief. Most policies are formulated at the direction of the Chief and written either by the administrative captain or the patrol lieutenant. The department is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA). The department was initially accredited in 2001. Prior to this the policy manual was less than 200 pages. In order to achieve accreditation, the policy manual was expanded with hundreds of new policies added to meet CALEA standards. Like the old saying, “there’s no need to re-invent the wheel” the department used policies from Gatlinburg Police Department instead of writing policies from scratch. The result was that many of our policies still read Gatlinburg Police Department because the accreditation manager overseeing policy implementation overlooked

Numerous police agency’s and police officials work on a distinctive local, state, and federal level and role. It has its individual area, sectors, and function, and work according to local streets parts inside policing. In order for any local, state, and federal police division to work successfully it must hire chiefs, deputy’s, and sheriffs who retain leadership and who uses creative thinking skills to teach comprehensive, and aggressive instruction to make the police division a tougher department by holding all its workers tasks for doing his or her job according to its agency’s guidelines and procedures known as code of conduct. “Municipal police work for municipalities such as towns or cities, county police and deputy sheriffs work for counties, state police work for states, and federal police work for the federal government. Some have the same duties as one another or very similar duties, and some have different or additional duties. Their jurisdiction is sometimes the main difference. For example, a municipal police officer normally has primary

Law Enforcement: The following case study is from the Baltimore Police Department April 2015 and involves a young African-American man named Freddie Gray and how he was mistreated, arrested, and killed by Baltimore Police. Freddie Gray was running when he was stopped and pinned to the ground by police officers. The officers stated that Gray had a knife on him but did not see or find one until after he was detained. Gray was screaming when he was being detained and he also requested an inhaler, which was ignored by the officers (BBC, 2016).

According to CALEA.org, CALEA was created to give law enforcement a bar to reach, to enhance professionalism and service delivery. The enrollment process is first than applicants have to complete a self-assessment and an on-site assessment. The Commission agency review committees conduct hearing. Agency must maintain compliance with applicable standards, keep everything up-to-date, live by the letter and spirit of those standards. CALEA’s goals are to formalize essential management procedures, establish fair and nondiscriminatory personnel practices, increase community and staff confidence in the agency.

With the North Carolina Justice Analysis showed that attrition is 4 percent in the United States. It is important that this issue need to be addressed on the entry level, once the recruitment start. To decrease high attraction in law enforcement, the department needs to improve with educating applicant about the reality of being a police officer. Also, recruiter must identify characteristics of police officer who stay and focus recruiting on individual who have similar traits (Roufa, 2015). Also, 10-year retirement program for police officers need to be revised. After revising the retirement program, it should be extended from 10 years of service to 15 years of service. This program is hindering hiring, recruitment, and retention in law enforcement agencies. It is important that department reinstating and funding in step program that would give officers a reason to stay withe department for their entire career. Also, add more training for the mangers, so that the department will improve on internal morale and distrust (Atlanta Police Foundation,