It is rigorous, it is granular, it requires constant work. Over the last four years, efforts by the Madison Police Department (MPD) to meet the soaring standards of the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) were rewarded this spring as the department received the coveted CALEA accreditation—one of only 16 other police agencies in the state to hold that recognition.

Formed in 1979, CALEA sets best practices for law enforcement agencies across North America, encouraging departments to diligently follow an extensive series of standards that range from outreach to the public to crisis response and arrests, to record keeping, according to its website www.calea.org. Accreditation can be earned in three areas: Law Enforcement, Communications, Training Academies, and Campus Security.

MPD Captain Joe Race, who has led the department in all CALEA efforts since joining Madison a decade ago, said that this is the third time the department has earned the Law Enforcement accreditation, and the second time the department has been certified for Communications.

Additionally, MPD also received the highest-tier certification from the state Police Officer Standard and Training Council (POST), which has some crossover with CALEA, though it also requires an audit, according to Race.

Achieving a CALEA accreditation requires the department to document and prove it is following procedures on literally hundreds of individual points, such as how it handles misdirected emergency calls, how it stores protective vests, and how it documents training. Race described it as “a tremendous amount of work,” but also something that in many ways, MPD has been committed to anyway.

“It actually became the fabric of the department,” Race said.

Though some of the in-person observations and inspections were limited by the pandemic, scrutiny from CALEA auditors—highly trained officers from other departments around the country—was still extraordinarily high, according to Race.

He described receiving a question at a follow-up hearing after the final audit regarding documentation of training for certain kinds of officers. That was something CALEA had noted four years ago and MPD had subsequently rectified, but which the organization was clearly still tracking.

This kind of magnified, intense scrutiny is something that MPD welcomes, according to Race, despite the investment of time and money required.

“We need to be showing the public that we’re doing what we say we’re doing all the time,” he said.

Race is a CALEA auditor himself, which helps with knowing how and what kind of documentation and questions the department will face, but also puts added pressure when it is MPD’s turn under the microscope.

“It means a little pressure, because I can’t be wrong,” he laughed.

Along with maintaining four years of these records, staying up with a CALEA accreditation helps keep MPD at the forefront of these best practices, Race added, as standards are updated periodically and any organization that wants re-accreditation must continue to evaluate its own operations.

That “self-reflection” aspect is something that is good for MPD, regardless of any recognition or other ancillary benefits that comes with the process.

“Someone is always looking at what you can do better,” Race said. “Accreditation is progress, not necessarily perfection.”

After last summer’s conversation’s about police violence and racism, CALEA very quickly updated its standards to include a ban on chokeholds, duty to intervene, and duty to provide medical aid, Race said. Other updates come periodically, handed down by the CALEA board after quarterly meetings, according to Race.

Currently there are conversations at the state level about whether CALEA should be required rather than voluntary, Race said, or whether the state should mandate another accreditation process like the POST certification that MPD also received. Much of that remains uncertain, he added, though likely there will be some change along those lines in the near future.

Race also emphasized that the credit for earning another accreditation should go to the MPD officers and staff, saying that during the process he told them to simply keep doing what they know to do, which was already aligned with some of the highest standards in the country.

“This is the work that they do,” he said. “I just drag and drop files.”

For more information on CALEA, visit www.calea.org.