The District Council member who oversees the police has asked the department to explain why it canceled a vital accreditation test after spending thousands of public dollars and nearly a decade preparing for the inspection.
Phil Mendelson, D-at large, dispatched a letter to police Chief Cathy L. Lanier Wednesday, asking her to explain why she peremptorily scuttled a long-scheduled visit by agents from the Commission on the Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies in April. CALEA accreditation had been a long-standing goal of the D.C. Police Department, but D.C. police officers botched the paperwork for the examination and Lanier decided it “would be a waste of time for them to continue,” according to a copy of the commission’s report, which was obtained by The Examiner.
In his letter, Mendelson, chair of the council’s Judiciary Committee, asks Lanier to explain why the paperwork wasn’t ready, why the full-time officers assigned to obtain accreditation have since been reassigned, whether anyone was disciplined in the matter and why the Police Department didn’t bother to send a copy of the commission’s report to the council.
Accreditation from the commission is a kind of seal of excellence that helps police departments recruit top talent and ward off civil suits. Most departments in the capital region have accreditation already and D.C. spent thousands of dollars per year and paid dozens of full-time staff and outside consultants to prepare for CALEA’s rigorous examination.
Mendelson told The Examiner on Wednesday he hoped the April cancellation was not the end of the department’s efforts to obtain accreditation.
“It’s unclear whether they’re proceeding now or whether they’ve just given up,” he said. “The other main question is, what went wrong?”
Police spokeswoman Traci L. Hughes said the chief is trying to decide whether to resume accreditation efforts. She said she hadn’t seen Mendelson’s letter, but looked forward to responding to it.
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