National Group to Give Police of Garden Grove Accreditation

The Garden Grove Police Department on Sunday will become the first police agency in Orange County to receive accreditation for meeting the standards of the National Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies.

Several hundred law enforcement officials gathered at the Hyatt Regency Alicante Hotel in Garden Grove on Thursday for a meeting of the commission that administers the accreditation program. The commission meets three times a year.

But while some law enforcement officers welcome the national accreditation program, some in California believe the state’s own program for establishing standards and policies is sufficient.

Why Not Police?

“I think this is the best thing to come down the road in our profession in a long time,” said Garden Grove Lt. Ken Whitman, a 23-year law enforcement veteran. “Hospitals are accredited; colleges are accredited. . . . Why shouldn’t police agencies (be)?”

Currently, 600 agencies in the nation are working toward accreditation, but not all law enforcement agencies have accepted the idea, particularly in California, Whitman said.

“The chiefs and the sheriffs of the state of California are split on the issue. . . . I think the perception is we have always prided ourselves in California as having a first-rate professional approach to law enforcement,” Whitman said.

Whitman added that California has the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission but said POST focuses on training standards while national accreditation involves the way police carry out their duties in enforcing the law.

To obtain national accreditation, police officials must prove that their department policies and procedures comply with 850 standards.

“They range in everything from what you have to have in a patrol car to administrative functions to what a holding facility for prisoners should be,” Whitman said.

The Garden Grove department, which has about 300 employees, filed for accreditation in November, 1986, and for the last year and a half has participated in what has become a good house-cleaning exercise, Whitman said.

“If you think the trolley is off the tracks, you put it back on,” he said. “We’ve poked into every nook and cranny of this department.”

10 to Be Accredited

At the close of the conference Sunday, 10 police agencies will receive accreditation, including Garden Grove, which will join the Hayward Police Department and San Diego County Sheriff’s Department as California’s only accredited police agencies.

The first national accreditations were awarded in 1983. By the end of the conference this weekend, 79 police agencies will have been accredited.

The standards were formulated by the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police, the National Sheriffs Assn., the National Assn. of Black Law Enforcement Executives and the Police Executive Research Forum--the four organizations that created the 21-member accreditation commission, which is based in Fairfax, Va.

“These are not real schlocky-type standards--professionals have thought these out; these (were) a long time in the making,” Whitman said. “You have to be reaccredited every five years. It’s not just a ‘Hey we did it’ type of thing.”

Garden Grove police’s revised procedures became effective Jan. 1 and were compiled in one manual. An accreditation team came to Garden Grove in June to survey the department for six days.

Whitman said a problem of many police agencies is that they have some unwritten policies.

“We’d look at some of the standards the commission gave us and say, ‘Now I know we have something on that, where is it? ‘ “ Whitman said.

For example, in Garden Grove, monthly traffic collision totals were distributed to all employees, but there was no written rule requiring it.

“We had to formulate some type of written procedure, even though we’ve been doing these things right along,” Whitman said.

The other agencies scheduled to receive accreditation this weekend are: Edmonton Police, Alberta, Canada; Delaware State Police; Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Department, Colorado; Greenville County Sheriff’s Department, South Carolina; Highland Park Department of Public Safety, Texas; Houston Police; Largo Police, Florida; Ocala Police, Florida; Pinellas Park Police, Florida.