County Police Civil Unit Re-Accredited

WHITE PLAINS, NY — The Westchester County Police Civil Unit has received re-accreditation from the New York State Sheriffs’ Association following a detailed review of the unit’s operations and procedures. In a ceremony Friday at county police headquarters in Hawthorne, Executive Director Peter R. Kehoe of the Sheriffs’ Association formally awarded the re-accreditation certificate to Commissioner-Sheriff Thomas A. Gleason of the Department of Public Safety.

County Executive George Latimer, who attended the ceremony, said the accreditation verifies that the Civil Unit is meeting the highest standards and utilizing best practices.

"The work it does every day is vital to the legal and judicial systems in our county," he said. "I congratulate the police officers and civilian members assigned to the Civil Unit for their professionalism and commitment to excellence.”

Gleason said the Department of Public Safety is committed to providing the most effective and professional police services to the people of Westchester.

"The accreditations we receive following a detailed review by outside experts help us to confirm we are meeting that goal,” he said.

The accreditation comes after an assessment team from the Sheriffs’ Association conducted a detailed review of the Department of Public Safety and its Civil Unit to review compliance with more than 121 operational standards.

“To achieve accreditation requires that the civil office meets a very stringent set of standards,” Kehoe said. “The Civil Unit must submit itself to scrutiny by an outside, independent board of assessors which reviews the agency’s operations in detail to ascertain whether it meets those many demanding standards. I am happy to report that the assessors that reviewed the operations of the Westchester County Civil Unit found that it meets or exceeds every one of those standards.”

Kehoe said civil units in only 27 of the state’s 62 counties have received the accreditation.

The Civil Unit is responsible for the service and execution of civil orders, judgments and mandates from the State Supreme Court, the Westchester County Court and local courts within Westchester County. It also serves as the enforcement vehicle for other state and federal jurisdictions where service is required within Westchester County.

In 2018, the Civil Unit opened 6,151 cases. The unit received and disbursed more than $10 million on behalf of litigants and generated $900,000 in revenue, which was turned over to Westchester County.

Sheriffs’ departments in New York State are required by law to perform civil enforcement functions. In Westchester, those functions are performed by the Department of Public Safety, which was established in July 1979 through a merger of the Westchester County Sheriff’s Department and the Westchester County Parkway Police Department, according to a spokesman.

The Sheriffs’ Association accreditation is among a number of prestigious accreditations earned and maintained by the Department of Public Safety:

• In December 2017, the Department of Public Safety once again received New York State accreditation after a top-to-bottom review by a panel of law enforcement professionals. The reaccreditation from the State’s Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) confirms that the County Police are meeting the highest professional standards set for law enforcement agencies in the state. Of the 572 law enforcement agencies which are eligible to participate in this program in New York State, only 142, or 25%, have been accredited. The Westchester County Department of Public Safety has achieved and maintained accreditation status, which is reviewed every five years, since 1992.
• The Forensic Investigations Unit has been accredited by DCJS through a detailed evaluation process conducted by outside assessment agencies since 2006. It has been reaccredited several times since and is accredited to provide forensic services in Ballistics, Latent Prints, Crime Scene Investigation and Digital Evidence.
• In 2013, the Department of Public Safety’s Special Response Team became the first SWAT unit in New York to be certified by the state Division of Criminal Justice Services. The certification was granted recently after the SRT demonstrated that it was in compliance with 15 critical standards that cover team capabilities and operations, training, equipment and administration.

Find and “Like” Hudson Valley Patches' Facebook Pages.