Holliston Police Department Officially an Accredited Police Agency

Holliston Police Chief Matthew Stone is pleased to announce that the Holliston Police Department was recently recognized as an accredited police agency by the Massachusetts Police Accreditation Commission, Inc. Town Administrator Jeff Ritter, Chief Matthew Stone, Lieutenant Craig Denman and Lieutenant David Gatchell accepted the award at a ceremony at The Connors Center in Dover, MA on October 12, 2017. 
The Holliston Police Department first achieved its certification in May 2016, where a team of assessors from MPAC examined various aspects of the department’s policies and procedures, operations and facilities. The Massachusetts Police Accreditation Program consists of 257 mandatory standards as well as 125 optional standards. In order to achieve accreditation status, the Department must meet all applicable mandatory standards as well as 55% of the optional standards based on department size. 
Accreditation is a self-initiated process by which agencies voluntarily strive to meet and maintain the body of standards that have been established for their profession, by their profession. “Being certified or accredited is symbolic of an agency’s commitment to professional excellence in the workplace. It means that the agency has agreed to adopt Program standards as a way of doing business -- and those standards are considered best practices, administratively and operationally,” according to the Massachusetts Police Accreditation Commission, Inc. 
The accreditation certifies that the Holliston Police Department has fully demonstrated its commitment to police excellence by living up to a body of progressive standards to ensure that the delivery of police services within the Commonwealth is at the highest level of professionalism and integrity and having reflected the best professional practices in each area of police management, administration, operations and support services. 
A special thank you to our accreditation manger, Lieutenant Craig Denman, for without his hard work and commitment to this project, this would not have been possible.