The University Police are reorganizing their department in order to become nationally accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies.

The main objective of the program is to help the police departments nationwide standardize their operations, Director of Public Safety James Elliot said. “No matter what city you go to, (with the accreditation program) police will operate similarly,” he said.

Elliot said he learned of the program about two years ago. He said he researched the program to see how it had worked in other police departments and whether or not it was nationally accepted. Through his research he decided it was applicable to NIU.

The Commission on Accreditation was formed in 1979 by four major police organizations, University Police Lieutenant Ken Kaiser said. “As a result, they drafted 944 standards for law enforcement agencies coast-to-coast to comply with on a voluntary basis,” he said. Kaiser is NIU’s manager of the accreditation process.

“It’s a state of the art procedure guiding the performance of police officers,” Kaiser said.

The program requires a written directive system, Kaiser said. “Written documents are used to guide or affect the performance or conduct of an employee. That includes any policy, procedure, rule and regulation, or any other instructional material. All 944 standards basically say you have something in writing to comply (with the program),” Kaiser said.

The accreditation program is voluntary, Kaiser said. One of the benefits of the accreditation program is the assurance to the community of professional police service, he said. The accreditation may also make it easier for the university to get liability insurance for litigation involving the UPs, he said. This could include insurance from outside agencies as well as the university being self-insured, he said.

The UPs have about 50 percent of the regulations the program requires, Elliot said. He estimated the accreditation process would take about 18 months to complete, and the UPs are in the self-assessment stage now. “It’s a massive job with our small staff,” Elliot said. “I am excited about it. It will ultimately be worth it,” he said.