Lansdale Police Have Joined The Ranks Of A Small Number Of Other PA Accredited Departments

LANSDALE, PA — The Lansdale Police Department has announced that it is now officially an accredited law enforcement agency, a distinguishing honor that only a small number of Pennsylvania departments have achieved.

Local police officials said that the Pennsylvania Law Enforcement Accreditation Commission unanimously approved the Lansdale Borough Police Department for accredited status during the March 2 Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Conference.

Lansdale Police said that the goal of becoming an accredited police department had been discussed for a number of years, and that things started to move forward in 2020 when Police Chief Michael Trail assigned Lt. Ryan Devlin the "daunting task" of putting the department on the road toward accreditation, according to information from the department.

Beginning in early January 2021, Devlin started to establish or amend police department policies involving training, operations, evidence and custody to meet 138 rigorous standards of best practices in law enforcement, which is required during the process to get accredited, according to the Lansdale Police Department.

Devlin, with the help of other department officials, succeeded in getting the department ready for an on-site accreditation assessment in less than 10 months, according to the department.

The process continued in the fall of 2021, when three independent assessors from the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association undertook an extensive review of the department's policies, procedures and practices to see if the borough department was worthy of accreditation.

After the evaluation, the assessors reported their findings to a panel tasked with determining whether the department met accreditation requirements.

The department ended up succeeding.

"The Lansdale Borough Police Department is always striving to give the highest quality of service to the community," the department wrote in a community message. "Accreditation will improve our level of service to the community while reducing risk to the public, our police officers, and the Borough of Lansdale."

Police accreditation status is somewhat prestigious, as it is reported that only 10 percent of the 1,200 law enforcement agencies in the commonwealth have earned this coveted status.