Oswego Police Awarded Rare Accreditation

OSWEGO, IL — The Police Department has earned re-accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc., or CALEA. It was recognized Saturday with an advanced accreditation with excellence, valid until 2021.

To earn it, the department had to pass more than 400 law enforcement standards through a compliance check in August 2017. That included in-depth inspections of the department’s operations and interviews with personnel and community members, according to a press release from the Oswego Police Department.

This is the fifth accreditation for the department since 2005, and the third consecutive time with the Excellence Award. The release says there are about 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the country, and less than a thousand are accredited. Of those, 10 percent have the Excellence Award.

Chief Jeffrey Burgner said of the achievement, “This award is validation that the high standards we hold our personnel to are aligned with national guidelines and best practices for the delivery of public safety services.”

The CALEA accreditation program’s purpose is to improve the delivery of public safety services by maintaining a standards set by major associations in law enforcement.

Image courtesy of Oswego PD