Should Your Campus Police Department Be Accredited?

UFPD Chief Linda Stump-Kurnick describes her agency’s experience in the accreditation process and the best practices she’s gleaned over the years as a CALEA assessor.

Published: September 9, 2024Author: Robin Hattersley

Should Your Campus Police Department Be Accredited? University of Florida, Linda Stump-Kurnick, CALEA, IACLEA, accreditation

Photo courtesy University of Florida

There are many reasons why a college campus police department might want to consider becoming accredited.

Liability avoidance is the benefit that stands out for most departments. Accredited agencies are better able to defend themselves against civil lawsuits, according to the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA). In fact, CALEA claims that many agencies report a decline in legal actions against them once they become accredited.

Greater professionalism and accountability within a department is another benefit. CALEA says its standards give an agency’s CEO “a proven management system of written directives, sound training, clearly defined lines of authority, and routine reports that support decision-making and resource allocation.”

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Additionally, government officials are more confident in a department’s ability to operate efficiently and meet community needs, according to CALEA.

Although CALEA is the biggest player in the U.S. police department accreditation space, there are other organizations, such as the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA) and various other state organizations across the country that also offer accreditation services.

So how should a campus public safety department go about becoming accredited? Is accreditation even the right move for your organization?

University of Florida PD Has 4 Accreditations

To find out, I spoke with University of Florida Police Department (UFPD) Chief and Assistant Vice President Linda Stump-Kurnick. Her agency is accredited by four separate accreditation bodies: CALEA, IACLEA, the Commission for Florida Law Enforcement Accreditation (CFA), and the Florida Telecommunications Accreditation Commission (FLA-TAC). Chief Stump-Kurnick has also served as a CALEA assessor for the past 10 years and traveled to other agencies to conduct assessments, completing 48 assessments to date.

Her department’s numerous accreditations is just one reason why she was named the 2024 Higher Education and Healthcare Director of the Year.

In our interview, Stump-Kurnick discusses not only the boost in professionalism and liability avoidance benefits of accreditation, but also how it helps her cross-train UFPD staff who then can mentor others in the department.

She then put on her CALEA assessor hat to offer some sage advice to other college campuses thinking about getting accredited.

First and foremost, she recommends they do their homework before starting the process.

“You’re not expected on day one to know everything and to have all your policies in place perfectly per the accreditation standards,” she says. “But reach out to those accrediting bodies, see what they’re about, make sure that it’s for your agency and your agency can build towards that goal.”

Reaching out to other departments that have already gone through the accreditation process is also a good idea, Stump-Kurnick says.

“There are lots of groups. This is a family and those of us at campus law enforcement, I think we’re very tied together and very willing to help each other,” she says.

Stump-Kurnick also recommends agencies to reconsider accreditation that have considered it in the past but decided against it.

“CALEA has made some changes over the last couple of years that I think have been really good for those people out there that maybe have looked at CALEA before and maybe it wasn’t an opportunity to move forward at that time,” she advises. “I think they’ve made some changes that make it a little bit easier on agencies to comply with the standards along the way, as opposed to waiting until every four years meeting that time period. It’s more on an annual basis now.”

In my interview with the chief, she describes:
How she got involved in the accreditation process. 2:02
How accreditation helps her cross-train her staff: 6:30
Maintaining all of her department’s accreditations: 10:30
Suggestions to other college campus police departments considering accreditation: 11:43
The qualities she looks for in an agency when she is assessing them for accreditation: 13:15

The transcript of the interview is below the following video, OR listen to the podcast.

Hattersley:

You’re department is accredited by CALEA, IACLEA, Florida TAC and CFA. Please explain the difference between all of those accreditations.

Stump-Kurnick:

Well, that would take us a long time, probably, but they’re more similar than they are different, that’s for sure.

Let me tell you a little bit, if you don’t mind, about the history of how I got involved. I came from Purdue University. We weren’t accredited at the time. They are now. I came down to Florida to take the Chief’s job in 2003. And then the University of Florida was already accredited with CALEA at the time. And I thought, you know what better way to learn about the accreditation process and understand it than to take some of the assessor training and go to a CALEA conference. So I did that a long time ago, and they were gracious enough to suggest that maybe I would want to continue with that ongoing education about the assessment process and ask me to become involved in the assessments. So that’s kind of how it got started.

For me, it was to take a deep dive into what the University of Florida already had in place with the CALEA accreditation. And then once we got going into it, all the CALEA, IACLEA, the Florida Association, they all provide a little bit different perspective on the way we do our business, what’s expected of us as far as compliance to different standards. CALEA is obviously the most intense as far as the quantitative amount of standards that we apply to and are accredited with, but each one of them has a unique component to it. Obviously the Florida standards and the Florida accreditations for us here in Florida, and I know there’s different accreditations throughout the country in each individual states, that really provides us that deep dive into Florida law, the new laws being up to date, making sure we’re contemporary on those, and practices for things, such as use of force and other high liability areas here in the state of Florida.

IACLEA obviously gives us that campus perspective, and it allows us to be in line with best practices throughout campus, law enforcement, campus safety and security throughout the country. So that’s a great opportunity as well. And I’ve had the opportunity to go out for IACLEA in my past and do a few assessments in my distant past, so that was nice as well. And I’ll explain the benefit of that if you’d like.

When you talk about CALEA, it’s kind of the big dog on the porch. Again, lots of standards. International reputation are really good opportunities for us to learn, be a lifelong learner here, make sure we’re contemporary in what we’re doing and how our approaches are. Make sure that we’re up to date on everything that we need to be doing here at the police department. And then telecommunications.

I had the luxury when I first started in my career of working a little bit as a police officer in telecommunications. It’s vital to any public safety agency. Absolutely. It’s the first line of communication. It’s the first line of getting that information, obtaining that information, and then it’s disseminating it out. So that profession has really developed over the years and of course, through the evolution of 911 and call centers and combined communication centers. So we felt that it was a logical next step for us.

We have our own communication center here at the University of Florida. Really thought it was the next step to recognize the professionalism of what we were doing and what we were trying to accomplish, and an opportunity for us to gain that status. Now, having said that, I know one of your questions is going to be, it takes a lot of commitment, but it’s well worth it. You have to develop the people within your organization. I happen to, in my role, rotate my command staff around the department every couple years. So they have an opportunity to spend some time up to two to three years in accreditation. I think it empowers them, it involves them in every aspect of the agency, and I use it kind of as a way to mentor folks through the agency. It’s a way for them to learn.

Hattersley:

It sounds like it’s a bit of a cross training type of a thing.

Stump-Kurnick:

It is. And that’s the goal… to have that deep dive so that they can have that unique understanding of it and take it forward and mentor others as they come up. So it’s been a good investment for us all the way around.

Hattersley:

And do you think with that cross training that it helps motivate people to stay in their positions and really become involved and really committed to your department?

Stump-Kurnick:

It does a couple of things. Absolutely. To answer your question, I think it also, once they rotate out of accreditation, they have a much better understanding of what the expectations are of them as leaders of whatever their division is. Maybe it’s operations, maybe it’s criminal investigation, maybe it’s professional standards, whatever that is. They certainly have a more unique understanding to the operations of the whole agency and certainly policy development. It gives them really the opportunity to learn.

Hattersley:

So since we’re kind of going down this rabbit hole a little bit, how many people have been cross-trained or mentored through this process? I would assume it is a pretty good number.

Stump-Kurnick:

Yeah, about every two years. So if you can imagine being a commander in a position, if they’ve been a commander in this agency, for example, for over six years, they’ve probably taken a two year stint in accreditation, and they understand and have been able to manage that process and then take it forward.

What happens is now you have three or four people in your agency — that’s a deep dive of cross-training. People that can at any one given time, jump in to help explain mentor people up. Accreditation isn’t something that comes along every two, three years, and you look back and you account for what you’ve done. Accreditation in an agency that’s good at it is a living, breathing thing that happens every day. It’s our playbook, it’s our everyday playbook, how we do our business, and how we account for how we do our business, and how we reflect back on it.

A lot of it is analytics. A lot of it is self-studying trends and what we’ve done and how we’ve done it and how we can better do it.

I’ve been doing assessments out in the field now for about three, four times a year for several years. It affords me selfishly the opportunity to go out to different campuses, different municipalities around the United States and see what they’re doing and talk to professionals in those areas and bring back to the University of Florida the good things that I learned from others and to view and make sure that they’re in line with accreditation standards when I go out. So it’s a great opportunity.

Hattersley:

I bet. And I would assume that it also helps make you a better assessor too, the fact that you’re actually in the field doing what you’re assessing others on. Correct.

Stump-Kurnick:

Well, I don’t know about better. I’ll leave that to the judges, but it certainly makes me well-rounded. I think it certainly makes me, it brings back some optimism to what’s going on in law enforcement in our world, certainly in campus law enforcement. I think as I look around policing and how it’s evolved, I think more and more places and municipalities are looking towards how we do our business in campus law enforcement, and leaning into that and leaning into some of the things that we’ve done.

Hattersley:

Well, I might be a little bit biased because we are from Campus Safety magazine, but I think campus public safety departments are the best in the world.

Stump-Kurnick:

I do too.

Hattersley (10:30):

Now, as far as maintaining your accreditations, I mean, is it hard to do and what are the steps to maintain it? It sounds to me like it’s more of an ongoing process rather than, okay, we’ve done this and now we can wait for two or three years before we have to do it again. Right?

Stump-Kurnick:

Yeah. You’re not going to be successful if you do it that way. It’s going to be a lot of catch up and a lot more hard work. It’s truly a process that evolves when you’re hiring new young officers and you’re acclimating them to not only the accreditation process and the various standards which we operate by. You’re building an environment that has some momentum. So once you get that process started and you are able to keep that momentum on a day-to-day basis, whether it’s your commanders are turning in analysis of what they’re doing or annual reports or those kind of reports, those sorts of things, once you get a battle rhythm with that going, it’s really not difficult to maintain. It’s a lot easier if you have it constantly in your forethought about what’s required and how we’re doing our business.

Hattersley:

Okay. So now, like we said before, you’re a CALEA assessor. So for other colleges and universities looking to be accredited by CALEA, do you have any suggestions on them for them? Any best practices? What to do, what you’re looking for when you’re assessing a department? What are maybe some of the red flags you’re like, oh, that’s not an appropriate thing for a department? Got any suggestions for them?

Stump-Kurnick:

I think anybody thinking about any accreditation should reach out to the accrediting boards. Look at what it takes, see if they think it’s attainable for them in the near future. You’re not expected on day one to know everything and to have all your policies in place perfectly per the accreditation standards. But reach out to those accrediting bodies, see what they’re about, make sure that it’s for your agency and your agency can build towards that goal.

The other thing is there are lots of groups. This is a family and those of us at campus law enforcement, I think we’re very tied together and very willing to help each other. So there are lots of organizations, lots of universities out there that are accredited like myself. Every time I leave a site, I say, “You and I are connected now, and if you need anything, please call and we’ll help you with any examples or ideas or anything to help you not only better the professionalism of your organization, but certainly be successful in any accreditation process.”

Hattersley:

So what are three or four qualities you look for that make a department a good candidate for accreditation?

Stump-Kurnick:

I think first of all, their willingness, again, to strive to obtain that level of professionalism in their organization, their due diligence, their ability to dedicate at least an FTE or a partial FTE, depending on the size of their organization towards the process. It does take some resources. Then just that they have the financial support and the support of their folks, whether it be a city manager, a university administration, whoever is going to support them in the process and be proud that they’ve obtained that level of professional status… I think are all very important things prior to entering into the processes.

Hattersley:

As far as, let’s say you’re doing an elevator pitch to another campus police chief on the reasons why people should be accredited. Can you give three or four of the payoffs that your university has experienced as a result of being accredited with all these different agencies?

Stump-Kurnick:

Obviously internal to the individual members in your department, they will certainly benefit from the advanced training opportunities, the standards being ingrained in what they’re doing and how they’re doing their work, the professionalism of them.

My biggest elevator speech is when you are accredited and something happens that goes sideways at your institution, they looked very quickly at what went wrong. And if you can show that you are trying to stay in line with best practices throughout the country, throughout the universities, around the country, throughout our state, on those three levels, I think it goes a long way to the argument that maybe somebody made a bad decision, maybe something went wrong. But certainly the department as a whole is a good department and is in line with best practices moving forward. So I think there’s a position that you can speak from when you are accredited, and I think that helps to any argument that could be made in that direction.

Hattersley:

Well, is there anything else you want to talk about as far as CALEA accreditation or IACLEA accreditation before we close up?

Stump-Kurnick:

No, I think they’re both really great organizations. I will say CALEA has made some changes over the last couple of years that I think have been really good for those of people out there that maybe have looked at CALEA before and maybe it wasn’t an opportunity to move forward at that time. I think they’ve made some changes that make it a little bit easier on agencies to comply with the standards along the way, as opposed to waiting until every four years meeting that time period. It’s more on an annual basis now.

They’ve spread it out a little bit over those assessment periods. So I would encourage people to go and look at accreditation processes if you can’t afford one or you maybe think it’s too big or too small for you, look around at the different options. There’s several of ’em out there. There’s lots of people out here like myself and other agencies that are more than willing to help and provide examples of things that will help you get to your goal of being accredited. So I would just say don’t give up and be that lifelong learner and continue to be contemporary in our profession.

Hattersley:

Chief, thank you so much.

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