The City of Fremont announced that after years of work, Fremont Police Department has received the prestigious Law Enforcement Accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA).
The accreditation given by CALEA places the Fremont Department among only 5% of agencies worldwide and six agencies statewide that have received the accreditation.
According to a press release, CALEA is considered a gold standard in public safety accreditation. To achieve this, the agency must “demonstrate comprehensive policies, adopt practices that promote transparency and accountability, and establish safeguards to ensure ongoing professionalism and integrity.”
“Earning the CALEA accreditation is a rigorous, multi-step process that requires
law enforcement agencies to show they meet a comprehensive set of professional standards,” said Chief Deputy Lance Brede, who spearheaded the process.
When Brede joined the Fremont Police Department in 2022, former Chief Sean Washington had already begun to plant the seeds of pursuing the accreditation. With Brede’s past experience with the process he stepped in to help.
The CALEA accreditation process consists of five checkpoints including enrollment, self-assessment, assessment, commission review/decision and maintaining. The maintenance checkpoint is an ongoing process that the agency must maintain as they are regularly evaluated under the CALEA standards with periodic reviews.
A major shift CALEA created for the department is the process of their readiness checks. “Every month we go line-by-line through the equipment and procedures our teams rely on, and more than once those checks have caught small issues before they became big problems,” said Brede. “It builds a culture where preparedness isn’t just a goal, it’s a habit.”
The accreditation is not only for the department but what it represents for the community that the department serves. “By accepting this accreditation, we are committed to upholding it year after year, ultimately leading to enhanced public safety practices for our entire community,” said Brede.
