For the first time since 2007, the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office will no longer be an accredited law enforcement agency due to a lack of required presentable data.
Wayne County Sheriff Barry Virts told the Times of Wayne County on Wednesday that the office couldn’t produce all of the required documentation for reapplication and was therefore voluntarily and temporarily withdrawing from the accreditation process.
The sheriff’s office became accredited in 2007. Every five years, law enforcement agencies must reapply for accreditation, which they successfully did in 2012.
Virts said that he has reorganized administratively and acquired a new software system to help monitor and maintain the records for all their accreditation programs. They will be eligible to reapply for the program on September 13, 2017.
Since they are withdrawing from the program – when they apply again in the fall it is as if they are applying for the first time, so the Accreditation Council doesn’t require five years worth of data like they do for reapplications.
“Technically, all I have to show when I apply again is three months worth of the data, but I’m going to be able to show a year and nine months worth of the data,” Virts said.
“Undersheriff Fosdick went to the University at Buffalo and the police chief up there went through the files, and he said, ‘If I was going to accredit you for the first time, you’re all set, but this is the reaccreditation and you don’t have five years worth of the data to show what you’re doing.’”
“We only had one, and sometimes two, years of data to show what we were doing,” Virts added.
Out of the 110 different standards that the council looks at, Virts said they were missing data for only a few of them – including a couple years of evidence room audits and documentation proving that they offered Tuberculosis shots to the officers.
Virts emphasized that the withdrawal wasn’t because of any operational misconduct, and he said that Wayne County residents have continued to receive outstanding and professional law enforcement services. He added that the jail and court facilities, along with the civil office, all still hold accreditation status.
There are no funding benefits to holding accreditation status, but Virts acknowledged that being accredited helps with the office’s defense should they ever be sued.
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