Excellence Award

Agencies seeking Excellence must be awarded before December 31, 2025. Accreditation with Excellence will not be awarded after this date.

The intent of the CALEA® Accreditation with Excellence Award is to provide agencies an opportunity to be further recognized for the effective use of accreditation as a model for the delivery of enhanced public safety services and management professionalism, including:

  • How the agency promotes progressive community engagement strategies.
  • How the agency uses data as a structured tool for business/management decisions.
  • How the agency repeatedly and progressively uses the accreditation model for outcomes management and benchmarking.
  • As an accredited public safety organization, how the agency fills a leadership status/role among peer agencies.

Accredited agencies requesting consideration for the CALEA Accreditation with Excellence Award will be required to meet all established eligibility criteria listed below, plus submit through the CALEA Information Management and Reporting System (CIMRS) an application which describes how their business model handles each of the four categories above. Instructions on the submission of this award are located in the Accreditation with Excellence Award tab in CIMRS. Once completed, the application must be submitted not less than 30-calendar days prior to the start of the CALEA conference where the agency is reviewed for reaccreditation.

Criteria for the CALEA Accreditation with Excellence Award:

  • Must have a minimum of two previous consecutive CALEA Accreditation awards under Advanced Law Enforcement Accreditation, Public Safety Communications, Public Safety Training Academy, or Advanced Campus Security Program.

  • Must remit current cycle Years 1, 2 and 3 Agency Status Reports (ASR’s) with CEO digital signature through CIMRS no later than 30 days after the award anniversary date. (Agencies remitting any of the required ASR's after the required time period will not be considered for Excellence).

  • No extensions to any of the four annual Remote Web-Based/Site-Based Assessments.

  • No conditions placed on the agency resulting from the current or previous assessment.

  • At the end of the assessment cycle, the agency must be in compliance with 95 percent (without rounding) or greater of all applicable other-than-mandatory standards, verified after review of the approved agency assessment final report. 

  • The current Assessment Report, which contains information from the annual compliance reviews during that cycle, must not have “standards issues” of a noncompliance nature and no more than two “standards issues”, not constituting non-compliance.

  • The agency must comply with the other-than-mandatory Community/Student Survey standard in the program (LE Standard 45.2.2, Comm. Standard 2.6.5, TA Standard 7.1.1 or CS Standard 23.2.4).

  • The agency must remit all requested data table information within CIMRS report unless otherwise prohibited by law.  

  • Must not be operating under any active Federal Consent Decree, Memorandum of Understanding, state-level complementary action or similar actions for agencies outside the United States of America.   

  • Must not currently be affected by issues that detract from the overall tenets or goals of CALEA Accreditation.

  • Must receive unanimous support from the assigned CALEA Review Committee and then a motion/second from a quorum of CALEA Commissioners.

The Excellence Award will be determined by the Commission and will be announced at the CALEA Conference.