Wilson County Sheriff’s Office seeking reaccreditation with CALEA

The Wilson County Sheriff’s Office is wrapping up a national assessment process that will likely see an updated accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies.

The office was first accredited by CALEA in 2020. It is within an elite group of just 10% of all 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the country that have received CALEA accreditation.

The Wilson Police Department also has CALEA accreditation.

The goal is to take the office to a higher level and continually improve it into a more proficient agency.

“CALEA is not mandatory,” said Wilson County Sheriff Calvin L. Woodard Jr. “CALEA is a national accreditation. They have a high set of standards.”

The CALEA process is an examination of the law enforcement agency’s policies, procedures and employees to make sure that people’s rights are not violated and that the agency has safe pursuit policies, evidence management, etc.

“By doing this, it is showing that we’re nationally accredited just like agencies that may be in New York or Hawaii or wherever they may be, that we are doing the same standards that these agencies are doing,” Woodard said. “It prevents liabilities, civil litigation, lawsuits. It shows that you are properly training your officers to prevent instances like your George Floyd incident and things like that.”

Woodard said it is a great way of assessing any law enforcement agency.

“When we first did it, we were like the seventh sheriff’s office out of 100 in the state of North Carolina that got accredited through CALEA,” Woodard said. “We are making some moves to do everything we can to make sure that we are transparent to our citizens and we are doing the job that they expect of us.”

The process starts with CALEA going over all of the agency’s policies. That can take more than two weeks.

“Then of course the assessor comes down into your area,” Woodard said. “He makes the telephone calls. He goes through your paperwork. He checks your evidence room, which is a good thing as well because it shows that you have got the stuff necessary to present in court to convict and or prevent any issues within a case and make sure that your handling of the evidence is correct.”

Louis Dekmar, lead assessor for CALEA, has been here in Wilson County this week.

Dekmar is a former police chief of 32 years.

There are two components for the assessment — off-site and on-site.

For the off-site portion, an individual with CALEA is able to obtain written directives to see if the reports deputies have written up are consistent with those directives to demonstrate that they comply with the standards.

“My job is to a come in and actually physically do interviews, talk to community members, talk to community partners and see whether or not the outcomes, the service that they provide, is consistent with the standards,” Dekmar said.

And what has he found?

“So far, it has been demonstrated that the agency has used the standards to deal with managerial issues, operational issues and administrative responsibilities,” Dekmar said.

Dekmar also looks at whether law enforcement agencies are embracing best practices or accepted practices.

“Generally what I have found is that it has been very positive for the agency, and the feedback that I have got from the community is very positive,” Dekmar said.

Dekmar said he would not want to be a police chief of an agency that wasn’t accredited.

Dekmar said it is an easy process to understand, but it is difficult to do.

“It requires the discipline that the agency has to undergo to hold itself accountable to the standards,” Dekmar said.

Woodard said it is shows that the sheriff’s office is putting the proper practices and policies in place to protect the citizens of Wilson County, “that we have a transparent sheriff’s office and we work towards trying to obtain the best goals possible.”

“It is something that not only I am proud of but the women and men who made this happen are proud of, the women and men who work here, and then definitely our community should be proud knowing that they have an accredited sheriff’s office within their community,” he said.

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