San Diego -- It is one thing to pass an assessment but for the Depot’s Provost Marshals Office, passing was an understatement.
The Military Police here became the first department in the Marine Corps to pass their accreditation assessment the first time coupled with high passing scores during the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Accreditation Program, Aug. 19-22.
“This accreditation happens every three years and it is rare that an office will pass the first time around,” said Grant V. Frey, accreditation team leader, executive director of Marine Corps Police Academy West. “Not only did they meet the minimum standards, they exceeded them greatly.”
The assessment is broken down into three sections or tiers. Tier one includes elements of safety, injury, and liability or authority. Tier two is the law enforcement skills and tier three consists of good order and discipline.
“The accreditation contains 16 functional areas, which contain a total of 272 data points that are pulled from a published directive,” said Frey, a Honolulu, HI native.
“We scored a 100 percent on tier one, a 96.6 percent on tier two, and a 95 percent on tier three,” said Staff Sgt. Daniel E. Cohn, Assistant special reaction team commander and team leader.
The minimum passing scores for this accreditation process was a 100 percent for tier one, an 85 percent for tier two and a 75 percent for tier three.
Although the assessment took four days to complete, the PMO had 18 months to prepare for it.
“It’s hard to keep up on things for 18 months, we really started cracking down with getting things prepared and ready in about January 2013,” said Cohn. A native of Bronx, NY.
According to Sandra K. Quamme, military police administrative clerk, there was not one person who can take all of the credit for achieving the scores that the PMO office did, it was a collaborative effort.
“Everyone in the office came together as a team and gets the office ready for inspection. Even if it included long hours of preparation, it all paid off at the end,” said Quamme, a Santee, Calif. native. “We have always kept up on our work so when it came down to it, really nothing had to be done except for making sure everything was cleaned and organized.”
Although the PMO passed the accreditation assessment, the entire process will be completed in November 2013.