GOOD CREDIT

Woonsocket Police Department earns re-accreditation status from review panel

WOONSOCKET – The Woonsocket Police Department has come through the independent re-accreditation process with flying colors, winning special praise for its record on bias complaints, use of force and internal disciplinary matters.

The roughly 95-member police department won accreditation from the Rhode Island Police Accreditation Commission for the first time in 2017, but the nonprofit arm of the Rhode Island Police Chiefs Association requires law enforcement agencies to undergo followup audits every three years to see if they’re worthy of maintaining their status.

RIPAC measures 204 areas of law enforcement to determine whether agencies are following the best professional practices, and the WPD was found to satisfy all of them, according to Executive Director Christine Crocker.

“As was expected, the agency was well-prepared for the assessment,” she said. “There were no standards found to be in non-compliance.”

Moreover, Crocker said, “The Woonsocket Police Department has no issues concerning bias-based policing, excessive force or disciplinary matters. The lack of issues relative to these matters is indicative of the department’s commitment to providing professional law enforcement services to the truly diverse community they serve.”

The WPD became accredited shortly after Police Chief Thomas F. Oates was hired, although the department had been working toward for some time before that.

Oates couldn’t be more pleased by the re-accreditation of the WPD, which he says is “almost harder” than winning accreditation for the first time. Getting re-accredited means the WPD has provided the assessors from RIPAC with proof that it has lived up to the promises the department made regarding the manner in which it intends to operate when it was first accredited.

“It shows you not only talk the talk, but walk the walk,” said Oates. “You did what you said you were going to do.”

While the review covers myriad aspects of police work, Crocker was particularly emphatic about the WPD’s record on issues of bias in policing.

“They had no complaints of bias,”

File photo by Ernest A. Brown Woonsocket Police Chief Thomas Oates greets youngsters in River Island Park during a past year’s National Night Out event. The Woonsocket Police Department recently earned re-acreditation status from an assessment panel that studied all of the department’s policies and operations.