Commonwealth University police departments earn PLEAC accreditation

LOCK HAVEN-The Commonwealth University-Lock Haven and CU-Mansfield University Police Departments have both recently earned accreditation from the Pennsylvania Chiefs of Police Association through its Pennsylvania Law Enforcement Accreditation Commission (PLEAC).

Accreditation is a progressive and time-proven way of helping institutions evaluate and improve their overall performance by adopting and maintaining the best policies and practices currently found in the field of law enforcement, as determined by PLEAC.

“I am very proud of the men and women of the CU-Lock Haven University Police Department (CU-LHUPD) and the collective effort made to achieve this accomplishment” said Chris Prescott, CU-Lock Haven chief of police, also acknowledging the work of Sgt. Matthew Coxford, who acted as the department’s accreditation manager.

“We started this process about two years ago at Mansfield and through a ton of work, mock assessment and final assessment it became a reality,” said Jeffrey Perry, CU-Mansfield chief of police.

There are approximately 1,100 police departments in the state of Pennsylvania – 177 are accredited and only 10 are departments at institutions of higher education.

“We here at CU-LHUPD are also grateful to the Bloomsburg and Mansfield University Police Departments, whose guidance and support were vitally important toward achieving this goal as well as the members of our facilities department who helped us make the physical changes needed to bring us into compliance with accreditation standards,” Prescott added.

The CU-Bloomsburg University Police Department had previously earned accreditation. Accreditation is an ongoing process, and the departments will be re-evaluated in three years to show they remains in compliance with the current 137 standards.