I recently offered an assessment of the accreditation of our police department. My post from June 17 on the subject is available on my website.
I noted four deficiencies with accreditation. First, accreditation is a self-selected status, and does not test or measure all departments in the state. Second, a list of several hundred standards includes many trivial ones. Third, the accreditation groups often include those who know and have ongoing contacts with those that they rate – rather than being truly impartial and untainted by routine association. Fourth, accreditation ignores serious abuses – a department can be accredited on small matters while large failings are uncorrected.
I erroneously predicted that the Register would run a screaming headline trumpeting accreditation as one of the greatest accomplishments in Whitewater history. Forgive me, Register: Police Chief Jim Coan carries his own water in your page three story.
The story merely repeats the same, often misleading, claims made on behalf of accreditation. Only in the eighth paragraph does editor Carrie Dampier acknowledge that accreditation is a “voluntary process.”
Here is the key question: (1) how many departments even bothered to participate, and (2) how many who participated received accreditation? You can easily guess the answer: if it were an impressive ratio Coan would mention it in a press release. He doesn’t provide the answer, but that is, in fact, an answer all its own.
I mentioned that a checklist of 220 items will include many that are trivial or have no unique connection to policing. In the Register story, Coan now contends that our department met 232 standards!
Does he think the larger number makes the department about 5% better? Both numbers are obviously silly, but it says something embarrassing and comical about the leadership of our department that someone even bothered to announce the larger number.
(Despite all those many checklist standards, could no one establish a standard for basic arithmetic and numbers-counting? Next time: 233 standards!)
Finally, I think there is no leadership in all Wisconsin that so loves flowery adjectives and adverbs over true quality. We hear over and over about a “very prestigious and professional honor” and – wait for it – that this is a “very good, nice honor.”
When will our leadership see that third-rate public relations is no substitute for first-rate accomplishment?
By the way, how much police leadership time did the city devote to this checklist award? Now, that’s a number – if provided honestly – that would really tell something.