GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - The Grand Rapids Police Department is currently pursing CALEA Accreditation, which is considered the industry gold standard of law enforcement accreditation.
As a part of the accreditation process, the police department received an assessment report from CALEA. The report contains observations and findings from the review of GRPD, which is the primary way that they are considered for the accreditation.
The report largely found that the GRPD are providing a high level commitment to the community despite their low staffing levels. The police department services the city of Grand Rapids, which has about 190,000 people in it. The GRPD has 295 sworn officers and 73 non-officers working for them.
“There’s very few professions that would throw open their doors, invite outsiders in to take a look at everything we do,'' Grand Rapids Police Chief David Rahinsky said on Friday. “This report is extremely complimentary, not just the department, but the community.''
In the report, it says that even though there is a low level of staff, crime levels have remained constant or decreased. "GRPD is truly a community oriented, citizen focused police agency that is striving to deliver the highest degree of services possible," said Scott Cunningham, the team leader for the CALEA report.
While Cunningham does indicate that the GRPD is a community-orientated police organization, the report also recognizes that Chief Rahinsky is aiming to make some changes after a few incidents have raised concerns in the community.
Rahinsky has identified three areas the agency will focus on. The first is how GRPD interacts with youth. The report says, "although the agency generally has a very good relationship with the community and its youth, the agency has experienced an incident wherein the agency believes an enhancement to training and policy would be beneficial."
While the CALEA report doesn't indicate what the incident was, the GRPD has had two recent issues involving youth. In April 2017, officers detained five youths at gunpoint during a gun investigation. At the time, Rahinsky said it was a textbook example of how police should respond to a high-risk stop.
Despite that there was concern expressed by the community, and the GRPD ended up officially apologizing to the boys and their families.
Then in December 2017, the community also questioned how the GRPD handled an incident where they pointed a gun at an 11-year-old girl and put her in handcuffs. At the time, Rahinksy said that the incident was handled inappropriately, and the agency opened an internal investigation.
A complaint was filed on behalf of the girl, and the GRPD ended up developing an Honestie Policy, which will include new procedures to follow when Grand Rapids Police interact with children and adding children to training scenarios. It was named after Honestie Hodges, the 11-year-old who was handcuffed by officers.
The second area that Rahinsky identified involves increasing the existence and utilization of crime data, crime mapping and crime analysis. The GRPD says that they are implementing a new process that will provide more information to Service Area Commanders, who in turn will be able to lead discussions about crime trends and action plans.
A part of addressing this area of concern was by commissioning a report from an external agency to examine traffic stopping data. The 2017 report found that there was a large increase in the number of traffic stops involving black motorists between 2004 and 2014. However, the report says that there was little change in the stopping of Hispanic and female motorists.
The findings in that traffic stop report highlight the final area that the GRPD plans to focus on. The department will continue to work on the city and agency's 12-Point-Plan, which was developed after a study showed that minorities were being stopped as disparate numbers in traffic stops. The police department is currently working on improving these processes and training to address this issue.
The GRPD is expecting to receive the CALEA Accreditation in July at the CALEA Conference, which is being hosted by the department. Only five percent of police agencies in the United States receive the accreditation.
In March, the GRPD did receive an onsite CALEA assessment, and they hosted a community forum as a part of the accreditation process.
GRPD also posted the full CALEA report online. It can be seen here.
►Make it easy to keep up to date with more stories like this. Download the WZZM 13 app now.
Have a news tip? Email news@wzzm13.com, visit our Facebook page or Twitter.