(Juneau) The Dodge County Sheriff’s Office is now an accredited agency. Law enforcement accreditation is a self-initiated process of adopting and maintaining standardized policies and procedures. Law enforcement agencies operate within a specific state or nationally recognized that are determined by an accreditation body.
To obtain accreditation, a law enforcement agency must work with a state or national accreditation body to develop and adopt a specific set of operation standards and maintain compliance during the accreditation period. After two years of hard work, the Wisconsin Law Enforcement Accreditation Group (WILEAG) recently presented the Dodge County Sheriff’s Office with their prestigious Certification of Accreditation.
“When I took office, we weren’t ready to become accredited,” says Sheriff Dale Schmidt. “We needed to do a lot of work to get there, and so, we did that. Our team has done that over the last several years, but then when I felt we were there to a point where we can start obtaining accreditation, I said it was my idea that we do this, and then I found a grant.”
The grant that Schmidt found was $75-thousand-dollars. The sheriff says that once the grant was found, his administration team took it from there.
“They deserve 100% of the credit for where we are at,” Schmidt says. “From what Chief Deputy [Chad] Enright told me, they put in 1,000 hours of overtime amongst the [administration] team, using those grant funds to get all of this done. To make sure we’re following best practices, to make sure we have our policies and procedures are all up to speed where they need to be.”
The Dodge County Sheriff’s Office Accreditation is valid for three years and follow-up assessments will continue every three years. Schmidt notes that while it will still take hard work and dedication by his staff to maintain their accreditation into the future, processes are now built into our everyday operations to make that work manageable.
