Later this month, an outside campus safety organization will come to assess Syracuse University’s Department of Public Safety’s policies.

On Jan. 25, an assessment team from the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators will arrive on campus to conduct interviews and to investigate DPS documentation and written procedures.

To date, only 41 campus public safety agencies have achieved the IACLEA certification. Another 16 departments, including SU’s DPS, are awaiting accreditation, Jack Leonard, the director of the IACLEA accreditation, said in an email. Accreditation would mean that DPS is one of the most elite campus safety departments and that it consistently maintains industry certified best practices.

Andrea Stagnari, the accreditation manager for DPS, elaborated that the certification makes SU’s DPS better.

“The benefit of it is to provide a professional benchmark for the department that says we have the best policies. It’s helping us to be better than the average department without the accreditation,” she said.

Stagnari has been preparing the department for assessment and accreditation since 2009.

“It sounds like it shouldn’t have taken that long but when you look into to it, to changing how people think, you’ve got to change the policies and the people to make sure we’re up to the best standard possible,” she said.

To be certified, departments must have some sort of written directive to provide overarching guidance to officers. Agencies must also comply with 239 standards and about 600 sub-standards, Stagnari said.

Some of the standards are straightforward, like maintaining a functional backup generator. Other standards are more complicated and mandate that written protocol exists for specific situations and that officers have training for high-risk situations or other health and safety situations, Leonard said.

In order to be accredited and maintain accreditation, departments must write the standards and provide documentation that the department is following the standards as well, Hannah Warren, the public information officer for DPS, said.

“(Accreditation) is an opportunity for us to get in line with the standards that are considered state of the art, the best way of operating in this field,” she said.

Warren added that the process of getting accreditation is very involved and that Stagnari is not the only person in the department working on it.

When the assessment team arrives, it will review the written standards, conduct interviews, observe DPS in action and write a report. An IACLEA Compliance Review Panel will review the report before the organization makes its final decision, Leonard said.

Departments may be denied accreditation, but this has not occurred in the six years that the IACLEA has existed, Leonard added.

The assessment team consists of officers familiar with public safety and the IACLEA accreditation. Capt. Gary Heller of the Amtrak Police Department will lead the team, which also includes a sergeant from the University of Connecticut Police Department and the assistant director of the Rochester Institute of Technology Department of Public Safety.

IACLEA accreditation certifies the department for four years at which point another team would return to recertify DPS, Leonard said. During those four years, an agency must submit an annual report to document its continued compliance with the standards.

Community members will have a chance to voice any concerns before the assessors leave. On Jan. 26 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., the public can call the assessors. DPS will not be involved in the comment process and the assessment team will answer the calls directly.

Published on January 14, 2015 at 12:01 am

Contact Jake: acappucc@syr.edu