Behind the Badge: Supporting Police Operations through Policy and Accreditation

This post was written by current student Tyler Holden.

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At its foundation, government exists to uphold justice and protect the public. The rule of law is essential to a functioning civil society, and upholding it is a responsibility carried out by the brave men and women of our police departments. Tasked with promoting public safety and enforcing state laws and local ordinances, police officers strive to serve as both peacemakers and guardians. To fulfill these responsibilities in a professional, consistent, and transparent manner, departments rely on a framework known as accreditation.

Before beginning my internship with the Hillsborough Police Department, I knew little about the concept of police accreditation—let alone the process itself. Over the course of ten weeks, I developed a deeper understanding of both its significance and how it functions in practice.

Accreditation offers a blueprint for aligning departmental policies with best practices in law enforcement. Public service organizations such as the North Carolina Law Enforcement Accreditation (NCLEA) program and the North Carolina League of Municipalities (NCLM) Law Enforcement Risk Review establish comprehensive standards that help agencies modernize procedures, increase accountability, and improve effectiveness. A core part of the accreditation process involves mapping these external standards to the department’s internal policies. I was tasked with reviewing these standards, identifying where our policies already met them, and recommending revisions where improvements were needed. In total, I reviewed more than 87 departmental policies as part of this effort, each requiring careful attention to detail to ensure alignment with accreditation standards.

At the Hillsborough Police Department, policies are maintained in PowerDMS, a document management system that enables staff to easily access, sign, and reference policies. A major focus of my internship was updating and reorganizing these policies within PowerDMS—archiving outdated documents, consolidating overlapping content, and streamlining language to improve clarity and usability. To make policies more accessible, we reorganized them into three main sections: Administration (100s), Operations (200s), and Investigations (300s). This restructuring required renumbering policies and updating all internal references to reflect the new system. What initially seemed like a straightforward task revealed the complexity of policy integration, as numerous references to old policy numbers were embedded in unexpected places. This experience highlighted how deeply interwoven and dependent these policies are—and how essential well-organized, clearly linked policies are to guiding and supporting an effective organization.

Leading these updates deepened my understanding of how policy and accreditation intersect to support law enforcement effectiveness. By the end of my internship, I had not only gained practical experience in law enforcement policy and accreditation, but also developed a broader appreciation for the systems that underpin effective policing. Most importantly, I saw how well-crafted, consistently applied policies serve the greater mission of policing: upholding the rule of law, advancing justice, and protecting the public.