Update: 6/17, 6:58 p.m.
At our Common Council meeting tonight, Chief Coan predictably lauded his department’s position (and implicitly his leadership) as one of only 16 accredited departments in the state, out of over 600. He didn’t say how many even bothered to apply for accreditation. (See Point 1, below.)
One more point, not minor at all — if you are going to acknowledge new Community Service Officers on television, either remember their names, or write them down for reference when your memory fails.
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I’ve mentioned re-accreditation of our police department before, and in that post I noted that it matters less than what has actually happened in Whitewater over the years.
In the City Manager’s weekly report for 6/13, there are a few brief remarks about re-accreditation:
Last Friday the Whitewater Police Department was formally reaccredited by the Wisconsin Law Enforcement Accreditation Group (WILEAG) Governing Board of Commissioners. The Board found that the Department is in compliance with all 220 applicable standards. The Board
is comprised of representatives of the Wisconsin City and County Manager’s Association, Wisconsin Department of Justice Training and Standards, the Wisconsin Chiefs of Police Association, the UW-Milwaukee School of Criminal Justice, and the Cities and Villages Mutual Insurance Company.We should be very proud of our Police Department’s distinction as it remains one of only 16 law enforcement agencies in the State of Wisconsin to be accredited. The Whitewater Police Department is the smallest of the 16 agencies and the only such accredited agency in all of Walworth and Jefferson Counties. I believe that accreditation stands as a testament to the quality of our Police Department and to the caliber of its personnel. It also ensures that our policies and practices are in accord with contemporary law enforcement standards.
I’ll take a few moments to address the ways that the remarks from the City Manager’s report miss part of the story. (You’ll see, then, why I think that accreditation is mostly empty of value.)
1. Number of Departments Involved. Being one of only sixteen accredited departments sounds impressive – after all, there are hundreds of communities in Wisconsin. For only 16 to receive accreditation, from all the police departments in the state, would be a high honor.
Here’s what the City Manager’s Weekly Report doesn’t mention – the accreditation effort is self-selected. Communities join the program, and members from their forces participate in rating other departments, often nearby.
This is not like a test administered to every student in the state, where some children score at the very top.
The correct measurement is not 16 out of the entire state, but 16 out of those who voluntarily joined the program. That’s a far smaller, self-chosen pool.
2. 220 Standards Met?!? To any sensible person, achieving 220 out of 220 on a checklist would be a dubious achievement.
Success at that level would raise an obvious question: What was on that checklist, anyway?
This should be a tip off: If you’re measuring hundreds of checklist items, some of them may be small or obvious. Even Cal Tech students don’t do 220 important things right. They may operate at a high level of achievement, but not that high.
Consider the items, from the WILEAG accreditation checklist, available on that group’s website. Most involve procedural matters that are the minimum any department should achieve, including organizational structure, fiscal management, collective bargaining, recruitment, communications, etc.
Many of these items are mundane, and no more related policing than they would be to running a candy store or dry cleaning business.
It’s easy to run up the score of items completed when many of them are not unique to the real community concerns of policing.
Achieving 220 items on a checklist of 220 only sounds impressive until one thinks about what it really means.
3. Who Accredits? There is no truly independent rating authority – they’re often representatives of community police departments.
There is no Consumer Reports for accreditation, so to speak; these are often local forces checking lists of standards for each other. Many know each other well.
They’re not afraid to mug for the camera, either. A local website ran a photo during the onsite visits of someone from the accreditation team with a smiling member of our Police and Fire Commission. A true auditor would avoid a happy-time photo in the very middle of the onsite visit.
(A police leadership with any real cunning would also shun a photo like that, the better to preserve the appearance of a serious process.)
It’s as though Ford, GM, and Chrysler joined forces to rate their cars. Can you guess what they’d say?
The Pinto – There’s more to life than ‘safety’
The Aztek – Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
The Hummer – Only the weak worry about gasoline prices
They want you to look away from their problems, and a lengthy checklist of (often simple) items helps divert your gaze.
That’s why the ACLU correctly notes that “Current accreditation standards represent minimum, rather than optimum, goals. They are very good in some respects but do not go far enough in covering the critical uses of law enforcement powers….a police department can easily comply with all of the current standards and still tolerate rampant brutality, spying and other abuses.”
(More on the ACLU in a bit.)
4. What Accreditation Ignores. Consider sensible standards that serious, unaffiliated institutions and organizations have proposed that directly concern the most important matters in policing.
First, from the U.S. Department of Justice, Principles for Promoting Police Integrity.
Second, from the ACLU, a Community Action Manual with goals and strategies to assure a good, community-oriented police force.
I know that Chief Coan might say that the ACLU is a liberal group – and from one of his emails one might suspect that he doesn’t like liberals – but what does he say about these points?
Forget the group, and focus on the substance of their ideas. You’ll see that these are good suggestions.
To follow the suggestions from the Department of Justice and the ACLU, though, would require a real effort to make this a well-led force. It’s hard, but far better for our community.
I am neither liberal nor conservative, neither Republican nor Democrat — I’m a libertarian.
Most police departments are well-led. When they’re not, they’re a mess for officers and the community. Cheerleading won’t make our city better.
To laud the current police leadership for an empty checklist is easier, but places their interests over the community interest.
Our local officials will often talk about their years in government, considerable experience, etc., but that makes me wonder: Do they not understand this, or do they hope that others won’t?
In the end, this is a feel-good, praise-me-but-do-not-look-too-closely achievement. Accreditation has the same relationship to meaningful policing for our community as a chocolate bunny has to a live rabbit.