The Official Accreditation Hatred Thread

[Thin Blue Line]

This is for all the guys on the job who despise what accreditation (CALEA) has done to law enforcement as much as I do. A perfect thread to vent on ***-kissing administrators who are slowly but surely destroying our profession by catering to these CALEA people.


Post your stories.......

[nasa808]

I hate ****ing CALEA...

[phillyrube]

We like CALEA. It gives us someone to blame for crappy policies : "That's more of the CALEA bull$hit!!!"

[DAL]

I thought it was terrible until I saw first-hand how some law-enforcement agencies in Virginia operated.

[LaPlaca]

It is terrible. Not to mention a massive waste of money, precious few resources and much needed personnel so some D-bag behind a desk 1,000 miles away can tell you how to police your neck of the woods.

a PD in our county recently poopcanned the idea after finding out what an epic waste of money it is. Unfortunatley, our chief hasnt caught on yet.

but hey....you get to put cool little PR stickers all over your cars and entrances to the PD that say youre 'certified' if you play the game long enough.

[DAL]

Unortunately, there are quite a few departments, especially smaller ones and rural sheriff's offices, that don't have any written policies to speak of. That is not good for either the deputies, who operate at the whim of the sheriff or chief deputy. CALEA probably goes overboard, and I did not agree with some of their model policies, but the status quo (at least at that time) was not so good, either.

[grog18b]

Well... Without CALEA we would still have the very old Motorola radios, no ASPs, no pepper spray, no new weapons, no computers in our cars, and no new lightbars.

Our department felt that spending money on new equipment was a waste until CALEA came along. While local departments had in-car computers, strobe lightbars, all sorts of gunbelt goodies, and semi-auto pistols... We had a big bubblegum strobe, crappy radios, those old portables that had two channels on them, and revolvers, and NO in car, or even in barracks, computers. I had to buy my first word processor MYSELF. I also had to buy my own camera and tape recorder.

Now, all that stuff is provided.

[KapsFB]

Very mixed emotions. We just had our audit in August. A royal PITA and I'm so glad it's over. While it is somewhat good to have a third eye check your agency out on occasion, it's extremely obstrusive and a good number of the standards are pretty senseless.

I'm fairly old school. My favorite saying is "Good day, nobody died". Which really mirrors my thoughts. If everyone (who is supposed to) gets to go home, it's been a successful day. I'm not convinced being accredited has much to do with achieving this.

[Sr. Sgt.]

The only good thing about this economy, we finally dumped CALEA. What a waste of time, money, manpower.

[DARE_SUPPORTER]

I just got done filling out a form and submitting to my Captain so he can pass it on to the diretor on my police organization just so I can wear a freaking AMERICAN FLAG pin on my uniform shirt to show my patriotism.......


THANKS CALEA for all the work just to show my love for this country.

[KenW.]

I am SO happy our Sheriff discontinued our pursuit of CALEA.

[Sackett]

We have a CALEA manager that works his own hours and makes GOOD money.The department has been trying to get CALEA since about 2004, and we are still trying. No telling how many thousands of dollars have been wasted trying to get that useless crap.

[LaPlaca]

If i remember right, just the process costs $100,000. Thats not counting the amount of OT, the shafting of the patrol division when we get raped and guys are assigned to help with this nonsense, the amount of paperwork and having some d-bag from God knows where telling you "youre doing it wrong".

we have good GO's, the best equipment in the county, some of the best training in the state and while we're not perfect we hold our own. Our number 1 problem is staffing, not the way we do the job.

[Smurfette_76]

Unortunately, there are quite a few departments, especially smaller ones and rural sheriff's offices, that don't have any written policies to speak. That is not good for either the deputies, who operate at the whim of the sheriff or chief deputy. CALEA probably goes overboard, and I did not agree with some of their model policies, but the status quo (at least at that time) was not so good, either.

CALEA isn't going to change that. You have to apply for CALEA cred and those agencies w/o policy aren't going to do that. Common sense should prevail between the two mediums.

It doesn't as my agency is CALEA and I freaking despise it.

[Delta_V]

Well... Without CALEA we would still have the very old Motorola radios, no ASPs, no pepper spray, no new weapons, no computers in our cars, and no new lightbars.

That's one of the problems. While CALEA doesn't require that the department has new equipment, lots of grants for such equipment require the agency to be accredited. That's also one of the reasons many states are coming up with their own accreditation process that mirrors CALEA but doesn't cost anywhere near the money.