First Responders Seek Uniformity

As society grows more complex, the demand for a reliable and effective response to fires, crime suppression and emergency medical treatment by government has grown accordingly.
These critical emergency services require increasing levels of training and professionalism by practitioners. Cape Issues, a group of concerned citizens of Cape May County, has recently shone a light on the need for centralized emergency dispatch as critical to delivering effective and efficient emergency services.
According to most police, fire, emergency medical responders and emergency communications agencies, the process of accreditation will professionalize and modernize emergency services beyond levels previously experienced; and save taxpayers money in the process.
Police and fire professionalism has been evolving since the early 19th century when Sir Robert Peel of England created a formal police constable system in London.
In the colonies, Benjamin Franklin and others established town watches to sound the alarm for newly created volunteer fire brigades in Philadelphia and other communities such as Boston and New York.
Since then, the principle of “professionalism” has come to mean ethical behavior, high standards of performance, and more centralized organizations that can coordinate complex tasks more easily.
The desire for professionalism has led to the establishment of accreditation groups that lend consistency and uniformity of standards to the “profession” they seek to improve.
Accreditation Process
Today, schools, colleges, and universities are accredited to ensure that students and graduates are getting the quality education they expect. Standards are set, while success in achieving those standards is measured by accrediting organizations that publish and support the ongoing efforts of institutions to achieve and maintain excellence.
Increasingly, over the last 40 or so years, police, emergency communications systems, fire and EMT agencies have sought to prove their professionalism through the accreditation process.
Police accreditation has been on the forefront of the professionalism movement for decades; organizations such as the New Jersey Chiefs of Police and the Commission on the Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) have provided leadership to police agencies that wish to participate.
Most, but not all Cape May County police departments are accredited through the New Jersey Chiefs of Police Association, or CALEA (Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement).
Most agencies that are accredited proudly indicate that achievement on their website.
The accreditation process begins with a recognition that agencies need to professionalize and modernize to keep pace with the increasingly complex demands of modern living.
Agencies that seek to modernize through accreditation conduct a “self-study” of their own agency, guided by the accrediting body, which stresses the concept that the agency itself needs to examine their own practices in order to understand their strengths and weaknesses.
The accrediting body then sends a “site team” to physically visit the agency to see if the agency is living up to the standards that are critical to success. For instance, the Public Safety Communications Program for 911 Dispatch deploys a site team to the dispatch center to determine if the agency maintains reliable two-way communications, tracks how many misdirected calls occurred, whether first aid can be provided over the phone, and the quality of coordination the 911 system maintains with state and federal agencies, etc.
The accrediting body then makes recommendations for improvement and renders a decision as to whether the agency is to be accredited.
County Dispatch, Police and Fire/EMT Agencies
According to CALEA, their Public Safety Communications Accreditation Program provides a communications center, or the communications unit of a public safety agency, with a process to systemically review and internally assess its operations and procedures.
Since the first CALEA Communication Accreditation Award was granted in 1999, the program has become the primary method for a communications agency to voluntarily demonstrate its commitment to excellence.
According to Martin Pagliughi, Cape May County Director of Emergency Management, “We have been discussing going for the CALEA (Communication Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) accreditation once we assume a few more agencies into the (county) centralized dispatch system. Once we get a few more agencies we will know how we are going to set up call taking structure including zones, PODS for Fire/EMS and Police or some other version. Accreditation depends on this. There are also several other accreditations that we will look into,” he concluded.
Capt. William Adams of Middle Township Police Department stated that his agency “was state accredited by the New Jersey Chiefs of Police six years ago, and that 105 standards for professionalism and best practices are applied to each agency. Every three years, a site team from the NJCOP visits the agency to audit compliance with those standards; Middle Township is due for its next visit in 2019.”
Some state fire departments have also embraced the concept of accreditation, but not in Cape May County.
According to Richard Edward Dean, Sr., fire chief, fire official, fire sub-code official, OEM coordinator, safety coordinator for the Borough of Avalon, The “Center for Public Safety (CPS) is the only accreditation agency I’m aware of for fire department accreditation. It appears that the fire service accreditation commission also handles accreditation for EMS, but all of the agencies I see listed are part of the fire department. The process looks grueling, and from what I read, no volunteer agencies are on the list (of accredited agencies).”
According to Lower Township EMT and Councilman Thomas Conrad, emergency medical technician training has more recently been the subject of accreditation and certification to standardize medical skills. That ensures that best practices are incorporated into EMT training.
EMT accreditation is often included into the fire accreditation process.
Benefits
By all accounts, the accreditation process provides agencies with the opportunity to modernize and improve services to the public by providing a framework for self-evaluation coupled with the expert opinion of an accrediting body. Accrediting bodies employ experienced outside evaluators who work with the candidate agency to keep pace with modern stress and strain of emergency service delivery.
Organizations such as CALEA believe that accreditation creates greater agency accountability for stakeholders, while reducing municipal liability insurance costs and strengthening defense against civil lawsuits because the agency follows best practices and can document compliance with those higher standards. 
Accreditation also provides a higher level of confidence in the dispatch system, police or fire service within the community served.
To contact Jim McCarty, email jmccarty@cmcherald.com.