E-911 Accreditation

The Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA) is a body which sets standards and best practices related to law enforcement and communications. The CALEA Public Safety Communications Accreditation Program provides a communications center with a process to systematically review and internally assess their operations and procedures. The standards, upon which the Public Safety Communications Accreditation Program is based, reflect the current thinking and experience of public safety executives and accreditation experts. The Association of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO), the leading communications membership association, was a partner in the development of CALEA's standards for public safety communications agencies and its accreditation program.

We are proud to be one of approximately 67 Communications Centers nationwide currently accredited; a pretty exclusive group considering there are over 6,000 Communication Centers in the United States. There are only 6 in Virginia. More importantly, this process has led us to review many aspects of what we do and how we do it and compare ourselves with other centers to see what we could do better.

When asked why is it important to do all this work to maintain accreditation my answer is for the staff, the community, and the City. It should be a source of pride to know you work at one of the few accredited public safety communications agencies in the nation, we want the community to know how special each of you are and accreditation helps to promote this. We do this to show the community we set high standards and are the best at what we do. It is a source of pride for the City of Roanoke to be one of a handful of Cities that have nationally accredited communications, police, fire and sheriffs departments.