A team of inspectors from the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement arrived on campus last Saturday to examine Safety and Security facilities determine if the department is eligible for accreditation as a college security agency. This is the first time that Safety and Security is undergoing an accreditation process.
If successful, Safety and Security will be one of the first U.S. college security groups that is not an official police force to receive accreditation, said Keiselim Montas, an associate director of Safety and Security overseeing the process.
The association, composed of college and university police chiefs and security directors, provides a voluntary accreditation program to its members. The program commission, chaired by Safety and Security director Harry Kinne, is responsible for outlining campus security agencies’ responsibilities, both in administration and operations. Safety agencies use the standards as a guideline to adjust their procedures, accreditation director John Leonard said.
College security forces contact the association, which then assigns assessment teams to visit campuses, Leonard said.
Safety and Security has been preparing for the evaluation for four years. The office created written procedures for every possible situation, seeking to ensure all workers understand protocol.
The department’s actions are currently governed by a strict set of guideline.
“If a call comes in, how do you establish if it’s an emergency call, how do you get people to the situation, when do you call the police, when do you call the fire department, how do you keep in contact with the person — the list goes on,” Montas said. “Every single thing that we do in terms of service is ruled by a set of guidelines.”
In order to guarantee full preparation, Safety and Security contracted the Northern New England Police Accreditation Commission for a practice run, which evaluated the department in September, Montas said.
“The Dartmouth Department of Safety and Security has to comply with 203 standards, in order to achieve accredited status,” Major Cleveland Smith, who leads the International Association of Campus Law enforcement group responsible for assessing Safety and Security, said in an email.
After the initial examination, the accreditation team writes a report within 10 days of the visit.
Kinne said all commission members are from programs that have undergone the accreditation process, and he will recuse himself from the final vote, as is standard practice.
Safety and Security has not been accredited in the past because it is a non-sworn agency, meaning the department is not made up of official police officers.
“Trying to find specific standards and benchmarks for our sort of activity is difficult until we found the ones [the accreditation association] produced,” Kinne said.
Safety and Security will likely hear the results by January 2014.
Commander of professional standards bureau at Brown University Lieutenant Bruce Holt and department of public safety assistant director at the Rochester Institute of Technology Stacey DeRooy also headed the accreditation team.
