The Greensboro Police Department (GPD) recently received its 11th national accreditation from the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA).
In 1986, the GPD was the first law enforcement agency in North Carolina to receive CALEA accreditation and it has maintained that accreditation now for 35 years.
CALEA is the leading credentialing agency for law enforcement organizations in the country and is considered the gold standard of public safety.
CALEA reviewed GPD policies and procedures every year for four years to verify compliance. At the end of the fourth year, a team of CALEA assessors examined all aspects of the GPD including community engagement, policies, procedures, equipment and facilities. Members of the community were interviewed as well as GPD employees.
The CALEA commission voted unanimously to award the GPD re-accreditation.
Greensboro Police Chief Brian James in a press release said, “I am very proud of everyone in our department for helping to earn this eleventh award. The continued commitment of every employee to pursue excellence in serving our community is what makes our department special.”
CALEA President Anthony Purcell, Chief of Police for the University of Alabama at Birmingham Police Department said, “This award of accreditation does not come easy. By voluntarily choosing to seek CALEA accreditation, the agency commits to an ongoing review of adherence to CALEA’s standards. Each community with CALEA accredited agencies should be confident that their public safety organization is going above and beyond and operating under the highest standards in public safety.”
Less than 10 percent of all law enforcement agencies in the US are accredited through CALEA.
The GPD and CALEA have a long history together. The executive director of CALEA is Craig Hartley, a former Greensboro assistant police chief. Hartley took over after Sylvester Daughtry, a retired Greensboro police chief, retired as executive director of CALEA in 2013.
All this and the City Council can’t seem to find the dollars to fully fund our Police Department.
GPD can be proud of its CALEA accreditation because it continues to be a first rate department. Retired CALEA Executive Director Sylvester Daughtry was a long running chief of GPD before his move to CALEA. Among Daughtry’s notable actions while GPD chief was appointment of David Wray as an assistant chief. Following a spotless GPD career and after Daughtry’s departure Wray was selected as GPD chief, continuing a tradition of quality leadership in the department. It was unfortunate for Wray that his tenure occurred at a time when wild and unfounded racial charges were being hurled about the department and city. Wray was caught in the middle of local racial unrest, and in spite of his sterling record and positive racial accomplishments for the department and community, was tarred in the local media and unceremoniously forced from office. The word race was powerful and feared by many at the thought of association with it, regardless of circumstance. To its everlasting shame the City Council ducked at the word race and chose to believe Wray had engaged in racial behavior instead of standing up for its long term loyal employee. Wray subsequently suffered tremendous financial harm that the council would not address. To this day no one on any City Council has had the courage to speak honestly about the Wray affair. He has proved himself the better person and moved on with his life.
For agencies with a good set of rules & regulations, general orders, SOP’s, etc… CALEA is a waste of taxpayer money. Like many things, its intentions were good (and useful) for many agencies when it was created. However, as hiring, training, etc… standards have become more stringent and streamlined, that money could better be used for other purposes. My $.02
If he was so great how was he outsmarted by Hinson?
Is that you, David or is it one of his boys? Maybe one of the people that use to jog with him downtown shirtless?
CALEA is the best accreditation money can buy.
If Hinson was so smart why did he suddenly “retire “ when he was next in line for the police chiefs job He didn’t outsmart anyone . Gso had a council that was so afraid of the dreaded “r” word they all would have taken a long walk off a short bridge holding hands before they would go against the black so called pastors in the community Hinson was as dirty cop as any you’ll ever see on any TV program
Well he beat you guys, so….
Dufus is a perfect name for you when you say “you guys” who are you referring to.
The Gso. Council was so afraid of the “r” word they crawled under the dais and voted to call the Klan-cwp shootout a massacre. They should have looked in a dictionary for the meaning it’s hard to have a massacre when both sides have guns and are shooting at each other. The Native Americans were massacred at Wounded Knee and Mai-Lai was a massacre in Vietnam but Nov. 3rd was not. Council was so afraid of the black pastors they gave in to them
“The Wray Affair”, as you call it, was spawned out of nothing more than GPD literally making a federal case out of an employee allegedly committing infractions that they should have just been fired for. Talk about wasting more time and money than CALEA and Cure Violence combined. If you can fire an employee for their behavior, then just do that and move on. There was no need to put a whole squad on the guy tracking him around, building files, being sneaky for sneakiness sake, creating a conspiracy where none exists. In the end, the dude didn’t even lose his job, let alone get charged with anything. All Wray had to do was say, “You were caught violating directive X. You’re fired.” But no, he went way off the deep end as though it was a personal vendetta to get the guy, who probably should have been fired based off of what I have read, but a federal case? Come on. Get out of here with wasting everyone’s tax money like that.
Are you really that dim there was no way in hell that Hinson could have been fired not with the council and manager that were in office. The black community would have been in an uproar and the council were not going to have that you don’t get votes upsetting your base. I know I was there
Then why try to do anything at all? What was the point if you know going in that you aren’t going anywhere? I don’t think your argument flies. If they had criminal charges, where are they? The D.A. and the Feds don’t care about city council. Yet nothing came of it. Administratively, all they had to do was show that he was double dipping (allegedly) and terminate his employment. There is no counter argument to that, assuming they bothered to build an administrative case, which has a much lower threshold than a criminal one. Instead we got some botched criminal nonsense that went nowhere. …Well, it did go somewhere. It cost the chief his job.
Maybe he should have focused less on making his guys wear hats and more on the work. Nobody looks good in that dumb hat and I am frankly surprised that GPD still has those things. You know it’s just a modified taxi driver’s hat right? Google it. But mandatory hat wearing was more important than morale and productivity, that and rotating shifts. I was living in G’boro when all of his officers put up a billboard asking him to be removed from office. Interestingly, for once the city listened.
Not all the officers it was a small group of – look carefully at the next word – black officers and the billboard was paid for by the black so called pastors who was leading the charge to oust Wray because they were listening to Hinson and a few other black officers about alleged racial discrimination in the department. It also turned out to be not so and that group used former manager Mitch johnson as a puppet for their dirty work. Glad you’ve moved on. Gso is better off without you.
Maybe the problem the illustrious former chief had is that he hired back his old buddies who sucked as detectives when they worked there. And quoting you, Hinson made it to retirement. Some of the others did not. The Wray administration was a “rules for thee but not for me” group of bobble head white males who literally ran the agency into the ground in about two years. There were policy changes that led to a majority of the force not supporting their chief. There was also a vote of no confidence by over 100 hundred officers. None of this had anything to do with Hinson. I enjoy the revisionist history and the lack of self reflection some have about a chief from 15 years ago. Guess what? I was there too.
The billboard was paid for by the GPOA (Greensboro Police Officers Association) who conducted the vote of no confidence. The association is made up of officers of all races (since you think the only officers that had issues were black). The majority of officers (you know, not the bobble heads or ancient hire backs) did not support policy changes. Once a chief (or anyone in charge of an agency or organization) loses the support of most of their employees they end up leaving. Stop pretending that the only reason Wray (and others in his command staff) was because of Hinson. And if it was because of Hinson, then that shows the ineptitude of the hierarchy in the department. Maybe if some of them had worked on the street more instead of administrative and special squad positions they would have known how to an investigation.
Boyinblue, it was the police union that funded the sign, not “the black officers” and “black pastors” as you call them. The union at the time was made up of most of patrol, which was a pretty good bend of black, white, and a few other races if that matters to you. For me, I just call my coworkers, “my coworkers”, not “the black officers”, but they weren’t your coworkers were they? You considered them your underlings. Watch out, your racism is showing.
Anyway, most of patrol, including the white officers, were being forced to wear dumb taxi driver hats at all times and work a schedule that rotated through four shifts, with 2 weeks on each shift. So every month they went from night shift back to day shift and everything in between. Meanwhile the administration got to sit in their office and work 8 to 5 if they bothered to come in at all. To put it bluntly, the officers were fed up with that nonsense and just wanted a chief that cared about the physical and mental health of his officers. Chief Wray burned through the support of his officers by his failure to support them, and they literally turned their backs on him for it.
Nothing like an angry ex black cop and if I remember the majority of the 100 you speak of were black also. Didn’t like change set in their ways had to wear a hat my my such a sad lot. danny always needs more officers.
hinson was given an ultimatum retire or be fired he had used up all his chips and had no one to protect him
I never said “Wray Affair “. Learn to read
Oh geez Boyinblue. Take a look back and take a breath. If you care to notice, “Bill” specifically called it “the Wray Affair” in the second comment on the article. My initial reply was clearly to “Bill”, not to you. You can tell who is replying to who by the indentaions in the comment chain for the most part, if you are not reading this on a phone. Then you started chiming in directing your comments at me, so I replied back to you.
Even without the indents, if you had bothered to read and comprehend Bill’s comment, you would understand that my reply was to him, not you. My comment just happened to post shortly after yours posted.
You have been wrong so many times on here, bro. Maybe let it go.
So being “Accredited”, we will start seeing the Homicide rates drop, the Armed robberies drop, overdoses drop, the Gang situation get under control, etc., etc.. NOT. The is just big Hype, that doesn’t change anything basically for the Citizens of Greensboro. It basically just tells the Management of the Police Department how to run things. Don’t they know, or haven’t they known how to run their Department??? How does an outside company, not even in North Carolina know how to run the City of Greensboro Police Department?
The Guilford County Sheriff is also trying to get the Sheriffs Department Accredited. We all know he doesn’t know how to run the Sheriff’s Department, or even lock his vehicle and take the keys with him. The one thing they don’t tell you is that it takes a sworn position in the Dept. just to keep the process going (Salary, benefits, vehicle, etc. – over $100,000 per year). I am sure there are other costs involved.
I would like to see what the benefits provide the Communities in the next 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, year. Show us the reduction in all Crime categories, the increase in new hires, not the continued story of we cant recruit officers because of salary, the state of the nation, blah blah.
If they cant show the benefits after 1 year, I would say let the Accreditation lapse.
Don who said anything about racism you brought that up and I’ve always heard the guilty dog barks first so if the shoe fits wear it
You don’t have to wear a sign saying, “I am a racist” to be one. It comes out in your language, like when you incorrectly claimed that the billboard was put up by “black pastors” or that the union was primarily made up of “black officers” who were out to get the chief. Almost ALL of patrol was out to get rid of the chief for making them rotate shifts, a practice that has long been ridiculed for being ineffective at doing anything other than lower health and morale of officers.
The police union at GPD has never been made up of primarily black officers. You are thinking of the North State Association, which is another association altogether, of which some black GPD officers are members. The Greensboro Police Officers Association, was (and still is) the primary police union at GPD, the one that funded the billboard, and the one that put up a vote of no confidence in Chief Wray, which was sponsored by over 100 officers, primarily white males. (I think in your old age you are misremembering the facts at the time. Either that or you are so jaded by your angst that you refuse to recall the facts correctly.)
Ah, CALEA, the best accreditation money can buy. Good ol’ boys telling other good ol’ boys that they are doing everything great. I wonder if anyone who has paid CALEA their money has failed to be CALEA certified.
Seriously GPD, you already have your own standards in place. What are you really getting for you money at this point besides a plaque on the wall?
Maybe calea had a course in how to protect businesses from looters and arsonists while they are “peacefully protesting “
Hey “boyinblue” racist much? I am narrowing down the list of which command staff member you were back in the day. I am going to go with the 2-3 that only had a high school education based on the way you write. Must be hard to hold on to so much resentment for over 15 years! Most people are happy to retire. Others seem to grow more bitter because they no longer have power over people-to create schedules that go against peer reviewed studies, to destroy morale, to make officers work and depend on off duty to survive. All while the “leadership” sits in offices and wears the skinny belt. BTW since you cited Sylvester Daughtry, he is the person who brought permanent schedules to GPD based on things he learned from other agencies and IACP.
Obviously you’re the one with a limited education you can’t read because nothing I’ve written said a word about Daughtry I really respected him good honest officer. You probably had more liking to bellamy or white now those were some moral black cops. And by the way I have a 4 year degree with a Masters to go with it. How about yourself
You drunk posting, Boyinblue? Everybody makes typos, but if you are going to tout how educated you are, how about proofreading your post first. I see about a dozen grammatical errors in this post about how smart you are.
Like I said, maybe it’s time to move on.