CALEA Officials Impressed With Mauldin Police

Last week representatives from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc. (CALEA), spent several days in Mauldin to do a top-to-bottom evaluation of the police department. Judging from their comments in a public hearing they were impressed with what they saw.

Virgil Young was one of the two assessors who was evaluating the Mauldin Police and said, “This has been one of the smoothest visits I’ve had. I’ve seen this department do things that other small department aren’t able to do.”

Young, along with fellow assessor Ray Scharf, interviewed almost every member of the police department, went on ride-alongs and reviewed pertinent documentation.

The assessors will make recommendations to a commission that will make a decision on whether or not to award Mauldin Police accreditation. That ruling will be made in March. Were the Mauldin PD to be accredited, it would be only the third such department to do so in the Upstate, with the departments at the City of Greenville and USC-Upstate being the other two.

For Police Chief Bryan Turner accreditation marks another step towards eradicating a negative perception of the department that may have existed prior to his arrival. 

“Accreditation would put us on a different playing field,” Turner said of his department of 50-plus employees “There are over 400 standards that we’re accountable for and we are all about being accountable.”

Turner believes the general public has started to take notice. “We don’t do things the way we did 10 years ago. Our officers are better trained and courses that used to be available to a few people are now available to everyone and that improves our professionalism across the board.

Should accreditation be awarded, representatives from CALEA will return for a progress check in three years.

CALEA is a Virginia-based, non-government organization that conducts accreditations of law enforcement groups across the country and much of the Americas. According to Young, at any given time up to 50 accreditations are being reviewed by the group.