Schaumburg police win seventh accreditation

The Schaumburg Police Department has received its seventh consecutive international accreditation award since 1986, maintaining its position as the first and longest continually accredited law enforcement agency in Illinois.

The long, difficult process of reaccreditation is a far cry from resting on the laurels of that first accreditation 24 years ago, Deputy Police Chief Paul Rizzo said.

There were both general and unique factors at work that made this particular reaccreditation as challenging as it's ever been for Schaumburg, Rizzo explained.

Chief among them was the recent departure of most of the people in the department whose jobs included being familiar with and staying on top of the accreditation process.

There also had been an unsuccessful effort to convert many of the records necessary for the process to electronic form to later simplify the task of the review team from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies.

Schaumburg did win an extension for completion of the process from the end of last year until this spring, and ultimately came through with flying colors.

Despite the difficulties, Rizzo said the work of staying accredited is justified for law-enforcement agencies whose interactions with the public must be so sensitively handled and monitored.

"These standards are internationally set," Rizzo said. "There's a value anytime you can show you're complying with someone else's guidelines."

CALEA standards are used to accredit law enforcement agencies in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The organization was jointly formed in 1979 by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, the National Sheriff's Association and the Police Executive Research Forum.

Schaumburg Village Manager Ken Fritz said staying accredited is important because the "industry standards" of police work change over time, a good example being that of high-speed vehicle pursuit policies.

That's why it was crucial not to let day-to-day operations justify losing sight of this long-term goal, Fritz said.

"It's a fairly labor-intensive process, but if you're doing the things you should be doing every day, it should make the end result that much easier," Fritz said. "It's like the old saying, 'What gets measured gets done.'"