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Posted by: DeputyFife

Published: March 07, 2008 06:52 am
Amesbury Police Department wins reaccreditation
By Katie Farrell
Staff writer


AMESBURY — Yesterday police Chief Michael Cronin traveled to Hopkinton, where the Police Department was among several in the state to receive reaccreditation.
Amesbury police were visited by three officers from the Massachusetts Police Accreditation Commission at the end of January as part of the reaccreditation.
The department has been accredited since October 2001. It must reapply every three years to keep this status.
Amesbury, Amherst, the MBTA transit police and the Mount Holyoke College Public Safety Department all received reaccreditation. Three other departments received initial accreditation: Burlington, Somerset and the Northeastern University campus police.
There are 127 fully accredited police departments in the state, and 16 others are certified.
"It's becoming a more and more widely accepted program," Cronin said during an interview yesterday.
Accreditation for police departments is voluntary.
Three members of the accreditation team visited Amesbury to review the department's procedures and policies to make sure they met 238 of the mandatory standards and 60 percent of the 123 optional standards recommended by the commission.
The officers who judged Amesbury's accreditation were: Capt. Kenneth McDonald, Chelsea; Sgt. Jeffrey Tobey, Wenham; and Officer David Sedgwick, Rowley.
They reviewed files and records and scrutinized all areas of the department, including the use of weapons or force, community programs, investigations, security enforcements in cruisers and training. They also took a tour of the station and met with the command staff.
Amesbury was deemed in compliance with 85 percent, or 104, of the optional standards, Cronin said.
There are 252 mandatory standards, but 14 of them do not apply to Amesbury.
"We're fairly well up there, as far as score goes," Cronin said.
Cronin said the three officers told them some policies needed to be updated to include new training information, such as the fact the Amesbury police now use Taser guns, and how officers respond under the Safe Haven Law.
Amesbury was the third community in the state to be granted full accreditation. With accreditation, the town gets a credit on its liability insurance.
"It's good to do it," Cronin said. "It keeps you sharp, and it keeps your policies and procedures up to date."
Cronin was in the midst of writing an official commendation yesterday to praise the hard work of the officer in charge of the accreditation for Amesbury, Glenn Chaput.
Chaput was unable to attend yesterday's accreditation ceremony in Hopkinton.
"He deserves a tremendous amount of recognition," Cronin said.

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