POLICY & ACCREDITATION
Accredited but Outdated: The Hidden Risk of Police Agencies Without a Policy Review Cycle
By Theodore L. Bremer Jr.
Accreditation Does Not Guarantee Current Policy
Police departments devote significant time and resources to developing written directives. Accredited agencies devote even more. Policies are researched, compared against professional standards, reviewed by command staff, approved by the chief executive, distributed to personnel, and documented for accreditation purposes. Yet after all of that effort, one surprisingly common problem remains: the policy sits.
The document may remain unchanged for years while the environment around it continues to move. Courts issue new decisions. Legislatures amend statutes. Accreditation standards change. New technologies are deployed. Training evolves. Equipment changes. Officers encounter circumstances nobody anticipated when the directive was written. Internal investigations identify weaknesses. Critical incidents expose gaps between policy and practice. The written directive does not adjust itself to any of those developments.
That is why the most important question for a police chief is not simply whether the agency has a policy. The better question is whether the agency has a system that ensures the policy remains correct. For an accredited law enforcement agency, that distinction is particularly important. Accreditation establishes expectations concerning written directives, documentation, accountability, review, and continuous organizational improvement. It should not be treated as evidence that a policy was compliant only on the day it was written. It should support a management system that keeps policy current over time.
Key Takeaway
The most important question is not simply whether the agency has a policy. The better question is whether the agency has a system that ensures the policy remains correct.
Policies Do Not Remain Current by Themselves
There is an understandable tendency to think of policy development as a completed project. An agency recognizes a need, researches the issue, writes a directive, obtains approval, trains personnel, and publishes the policy. Once those steps are complete, the project appears finished. That model is poorly suited to modern policing because the legal, operational, technological, and professional environment surrounding police work changes continuously.
Federal and state appellate courts interpret constitutional requirements. Legislatures amend criminal procedure statutes and employment laws. Accreditation commissions revise standards. Technology changes the way officers collect evidence, conduct surveillance, document encounters, and communicate. Body-worn cameras, automated license plate readers, drones, facial recognition, artificial intelligence, and digital evidence systems can create policy questions that did not exist when an older directive was adopted.
Operational experience also changes what an agency knows. A pursuit may expose ambiguity in supervisory authority. An internal affairs case may reveal that a reporting requirement is unclear. A use-of-force review may identify a conflict between training and written policy. A lawsuit may demonstrate that a procedure routinely followed in the field is not actually reflected in the agency's directive. Over time, this creates policy drift, where written policy remains static while law, training, technology, organizational practice, and professional expectations move in a different direction.
Review Does Not Mean Rewrite
One reason some agencies may resist comprehensive policy-review systems is the assumption that every review will result in another rewriting project. That should not be the case. There is an important distinction between reviewing a policy and revising it.
A competent review may conclude that a directive remains legally sound, operationally appropriate, consistent with accreditation requirements, and aligned with current agency practice. The appropriate result may simply be that the directive was reviewed and no revision was required. That is still meaningful. It demonstrates that someone with appropriate responsibility examined the policy, considered whether circumstances had changed, and affirmatively determined that the existing language remained appropriate.
That is very different from a policy remaining unchanged for eight years simply because nobody examined it. A mature policy-management system should be able to establish who owns each directive, when it was last reviewed, who conducted the review, whether changes were necessary, when the next review is due, and what events would require an earlier review.
Accreditation Changes the Governance Expectation
Accreditation does not create immunity from lawsuits, constitutional claims, administrative scrutiny, or poor outcomes. Nor should an accreditation standard be confused with the legal standard for constitutional liability. Those are separate issues. Accreditation does, however, change the organizational context in which policy neglect occurs.
An accredited agency has voluntarily entered a professional framework built around standards, documentation, assessment, and continuing compliance. That makes it increasingly difficult to treat systematic policy review as something the organization did not understand or anticipate. Missing a scheduled review does not automatically establish civil liability or deliberate indifference, but it can raise a broader governance question when an outdated policy later contributes to a serious incident.
The issue then becomes more than the age of the directive. It becomes a question of why the agency's management system failed to identify that the directive required attention. Accreditation should therefore be understood not merely as confirmation that policies exist, but as a framework for ensuring that those policies remain current and operationally sound.
When an Admin Problem Becomes a Liability Problem
The absence of a formal review schedule does not, standing alone, establish deliberate indifference under federal civil-rights law. Municipal liability under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 is not based simply on the fact that an employee committed a constitutional violation. Under the Monell line of cases, liability generally requires a connection between the constitutional injury and municipal policy, custom, practice, or another recognized basis for municipal responsibility.
The risk becomes more serious when outdated policy exists alongside evidence that the organization knew or had strong reason to know that a problem existed and failed to respond adequately. A stale directive by itself is one issue. A stale directive followed by complaints, internal investigations, significant court decisions, accreditation concerns, repeated incidents, or training warnings is something different. At that point, the argument may no longer be that the department simply missed a calendar date. The argument becomes one of notice, organizational knowledge, foreseeable consequences, and continued inaction.
The practical purpose of a review system is therefore not to create immunity from litigation. No such immunity exists. Its purpose is to identify and correct problems before accumulating evidence of notice and inaction transforms an administrative weakness into a larger governance and liability concern.
The Chief's Problem
Liability is only one part of the issue. There is another question that may be more immediate for the police chief: what happens when the governing authority asks why the policy was never updated?
Following a serious incident, elected officials, city managers, attorneys, insurers, journalists, community members, accreditation assessors, and plaintiffs' lawyers may all begin asking the same questions. When was the directive last reviewed? Who was responsible for reviewing it? Was the department aware of the change in law? Did previous incidents identify the same issue? Was the chief notified? Was anything done? If not, why not?
A chief cannot guarantee that officers will never make mistakes or that a written directive will anticipate every possible factual circumstance. A chief can, however, establish a defensible management system. There is a substantial difference between saying that the agency did not know a policy was obsolete and being able to show that the directive had recently been reviewed, the relevant legal and accreditation sources had been considered, training had been aligned with the policy, and an off-cycle review was initiated when new developments arose.
One describes organizational drift. The other describes governance.
When Policy Failure Becomes a Leadership Issue
Weak policy management can also become a leadership problem. Opa-locka, Florida provides a useful example. An outside review of the department identified broad organizational deficiencies, including policies that had not been updated for years and numerous procedures that did not meet minimum accreditation standards. The review also identified problems involving training, evaluation, evidence management, and other operational areas.
The chief was later terminated. It would be inaccurate to claim that outdated policies alone caused that result. The leadership concerns were broader. That is precisely why the example matters. Chiefs do not usually lose credibility because a single document crossed an arbitrary age threshold. They encounter difficulty when outdated policy becomes part of a larger pattern suggesting that management systems are not functioning.
A similar lesson can be drawn from Avondale Estates, Georgia, where a failed accreditation effort exposed significant documentation and compliance problems, including policies requiring revision. Leadership changes followed, and outside review became part of the corrective process. Again, the point is not that one overdue policy caused a chief to lose a position. The point is that weak policy governance can become evidence of weak organizational governance, and once that happens, the issue reaches the chief's office very quickly.
The Federal Consequences Can Be Larger Still
Springfield, Massachusetts illustrates how policy deficiencies can become intertwined with larger operational failures. The U.S. Department of Justice identified excessive-force problems and pointed to systemic deficiencies involving policies, reporting requirements, and accountability systems. The resulting reform process required changes not only to written directives, but also to training, supervision, investigations, and oversight.
The lesson is that policy cannot be separated from the systems around it. A perfectly written directive sitting untouched in a manual will not correct deficiencies in supervision, training, or accountability. At the same time, an agency cannot expect those operational systems to remain sound if written policy is allowed to drift away from current law and practice. Policy review therefore belongs within the broader framework of organizational risk management.
If You Have a Consultant, Demand More Than Documents
Many agencies retain outside consultants to assist with policy development or accreditation. There is nothing inherently problematic about that. In fact, specialized consultants can provide expertise that smaller agencies may not reasonably be able to maintain internally.
The problem arises when neither party clearly defines what the consultant is responsible for after the policy is written. The agency may assume that the consultant is keeping policies current, while the consultant may assume that revisions are only prepared when the agency specifically requests them. Those are very different arrangements.
A law enforcement agency should never discover after a critical incident that it believed it had purchased continuing policy oversight when it had actually purchased document preparation. If an agency employs a policy or accreditation consultant, the scope of work should clearly address continuing review responsibilities. The agency should know whether the consultant is monitoring legal developments, accreditation changes, review dates, high-risk directives, proposed revisions, version history, and events that should trigger immediate reconsideration of an existing policy.
These responsibilities should not exist as assumptions. They should exist as defined deliverables.
Outsourcing Does Not Outsource Command Responsibility
There is an equally important qualification. Retaining a consultant does not transfer the chief's ultimate responsibility for the agency's written directive system.
A consultant can research, monitor, draft, advise, maintain review architecture, and identify emerging risks. Agency leadership must still approve policy, implement it, train personnel, supervise performance, and ensure that the organization actually operates according to its directives.
The proper relationship is not that the consultant simply handles the policies. The consultant should function as one component of the agency's policy-governance system. That distinction benefits both sides because responsibilities are defined before a problem occurs.
Not Every Policy Carries the Same Risk
A baseline review schedule is important, particularly where the agency's accreditation framework expects periodic examination of directives. However, treating every policy as if it presents exactly the same level of risk misses an important management principle.
An obsolete cafeteria procedure and an obsolete use-of-force directive are not organizationally equivalent merely because both are the same age. Some policies have far greater legal, operational, safety, and reputational consequences than others. High-risk directives should therefore receive enhanced attention.
Policies involving use of force, vehicle pursuits, search and seizure, arrests, prisoner transport, temporary detention, medical response, body-worn cameras, electronic surveillance, automated license plate readers, evidence handling, emergency vehicle operations, discipline, and internal affairs may justify more intensive monitoring because the consequences of getting them wrong are much greater.
The review system should therefore be risk-based as well as calendar-based. Review intensity should be influenced by the consequence of policy failure, not merely by the age of the document.
A Calendar Is Not Enough
Scheduled review solves only part of the problem. Some policies cannot safely wait until the next review date.
If a controlling appellate court issues a significant decision affecting search procedures, the agency should not wait nine months because the search-and-seizure directive is not yet due for its annual review. The calendar establishes minimum discipline. Events establish urgency.
A mature policy system therefore includes both scheduled reviews and event-triggered reviews. Significant case law, statutory amendments, accreditation changes, critical incidents, internal affairs findings, litigation, new technology, changes in training, serious pursuits, officer-involved shootings, recurring complaints, or identified policy-practice conflicts should be capable of triggering immediate reconsideration of a directive.
The system must therefore be able to answer two different questions. When is this policy routinely due for review, and what events require us to look at it sooner?
What a Defensible Policy-Review System Looks Like
A policy-management system does not have to be overly complicated. It does have to be systematic and visible.
Every directive should have identifiable governance information, including a policy owner, effective date, last review date, reviewing authority, next scheduled review, risk classification, revision history, current status, and applicable accreditation standards. The agency should maintain a master calendar capable of identifying upcoming and overdue reviews. High-risk directives should be subject to enhanced monitoring, and archived versions should be preserved so the agency can establish which policy was in effect at a particular point in time.
The system should also make missed reviews visible. If two dozen directives are overdue, the chief should not discover that during an accreditation assessment or after a lawsuit is filed. The management system should surface that information beforehand.
Documentation Is Part of the Review
A review that cannot later be demonstrated may have limited institutional value. The review record does not need to become a lengthy memorandum, but it should establish enough to show that the process was real.
The record should identify that the directive was reviewed, that relevant legal and accreditation authority was considered, that operational implications were examined, that training concerns were evaluated, and whether revisions were required. If no revision was necessary, that conclusion should still be documented along with the next scheduled review date.
This creates institutional continuity. Chiefs retire. Accreditation managers change. Policy officers transfer. Consultants change. Attorneys leave. Supervisors are promoted. The organization should not depend on someone remembering what happened three years earlier. The record should answer the question.
Policy Review Protects Officers Too
Policy review is sometimes treated primarily as a management or accreditation obligation. That understates its importance.
Officers have a legitimate interest in knowing that the rules governing their conduct are current. An officer should not be disciplined under a directive that no longer reflects current law, training, equipment, or actual departmental practice. Supervisors should not be forced to choose between enforcing an obsolete written directive and tolerating a field practice that everyone knows has replaced it.
When written policy and actual practice diverge, inconsistency follows. Different supervisors begin applying different rules. Training becomes disconnected from policy. Informal practices replace formal procedures. Eventually, the agency may have two policy systems: the one written in the manual and the one employees actually follow.
That is precisely what a functioning review process is intended to prevent.
Accreditation Must Operate Between Assessments
Accreditation is valuable because it creates structure, but the structure only works when the agency uses it. A framed accreditation certificate cannot update a use-of-force directive. An assessment report cannot monitor appellate decisions. A policy manual cannot identify its own deficiencies. People and systems must do those things.
An accredited agency should therefore be able to identify who owns every directive, when each policy was last reviewed, when the next review is due, what has changed since the previous review, what events would trigger an immediate review, whether the directive remains consistent with current law and training, and whether actual organizational practice still matches what the policy says.
If the agency has retained an outside consultant, one additional question should be asked with equal clarity: what, exactly, is the consultant being paid to monitor and review?
Those are not clerical questions. They are governance questions.
The goal should never be merely to create a policy manual that looks impressive on the day of an accreditation assessment. The goal should be to build a system capable of keeping policy contemporary every day between assessments.
A professionally written policy manual is valuable.
A professionally managed policy system is far more important.
About the Author
Theodore L. Bremer Jr. is the Owner and Principal Consultant of Bremer Paralegal, LLC, where he works with law enforcement agencies on policy development, accreditation compliance, regulatory auditing, and agency reform. His experience spans public safety, including police, fire, EMS, courts, corrections, accreditation, and consulting. He previously served as a Police Supervisor, Accreditation Manager, and Training Officer during a 25-year law enforcement career. He later worked as a Senior Police Accreditation Analyst and Policy Writer, auditing more than 200 law enforcement agencies and maintaining accreditation-compliant policy language for 226 client agencies. He also served as a lead accreditation consultant to the NYPD Training Academy and the New Jersey State Police during their CALEA accreditation efforts. He is an experienced accreditation assessor. He holds a Master of Science in Criminal Justice from the University of Central Florida, a Graduate Certificate in Paralegal Studies, and is a member of Alpha Phi Sigma, the National Criminal Justice Honor Society.