Johnson County accreditation confirms sheriff’s office meets ‘professional law enforcement standards’

The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office announced in December that it had become the first sheriff’s office in the state to receive accreditation through the Iowa Law Enforcement Accreditation Program, a program developed by the Iowa Police Chiefs Association and the Iowa State Sheriff’s and Deputies Association and launched in December 2024.

The accreditation requires law enforcement agencies to prove they have policies in place that meet professional law enforcement standards, and that those policies are followed. There are 87 standards that need to be met in 21 areas of assessment. The assessment areas include use of force, professional standards, recruitment and selection, training and career development, property and evidence control, and others.

The Gazette sat down with Johnson County Sheriff Brad Kunkel and Johnson County Chief Deputy Randy Lamm to talk about the accreditation and what it means for the department and the residents of Johnson County.

  Buy Photo

Q: How long have you known about this accreditation program?

Kunkel: The accreditation program itself really started back in April of 2023. The Iowa Police Chiefs Association approached ISSDA, the Sheriffs Association, about wanting to work together on this project. We had to form a board for a council, for the accreditation program. It was three police chiefs, three sheriffs and then the Commissioner of Public Safety.

We had our first meeting here to hash it out and talk about it. That started the process of going through all the standards that we’re going to try and apply or have available to law enforcement across the state.

Q: What was your role with the accreditation program during those early conversations?

Kunkel: I’m one of the council members. The way the council was set up, there were, like I said, three chiefs, three sheriffs, and we tried to set the representation with each to represent small, medium and large-size agencies. So, for the three sheriffs, we tried to do our best to have one from a smaller sheriff's office, one midsize, and then I represent the large sheriffs’ offices. Same thing for the police departments.

The idea was to make accreditation available and affordable to law enforcement across the state, because really your only other option is CALEA (the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies). Only a handful of agencies in the state are CALEA certified, but CALEA is very expensive, and it's basically a full-time job for somebody in your agency to maintain that accreditation. Whether it’s an agency like ours or a seven-person police department, they don't have time to stay on top of CALEA. This made accreditation available to them.

Q: After helping get the accreditation started, when did you as a sheriff’s office start working toward becoming certified?

Kunkel: I don't know exactly when we started talking. I just remember Major Lamm … came to me like, ”I want to take this on.”

Q: What about the accreditation was interesting enough to you, Major Lamm, to want to jump into that role?

Lamm: I like having a task, you know, and working toward the end of it. I knew it would be something where you could work on it, and as you did, you could see the progress. It’s probably for selfish reasons, that self-gratification of accomplishing something, but I also knew it's important for our office and for our staff.

  Buy Photo

Q: You’re the first sheriff’s office in the state to receive the accreditation What about it made you want to prioritize it and get it done so quickly?

Lamm: I had no idea we were going to be first. I had no idea at all. In fact, probably for the first month, I didn't do much because I looked at it and I saw how enormous of a job it was going to be. So, I actually sat on it for a little bit, and then we just started chipping away. But the staff that I asked to help, they were so quick at responding. I’d say, ”Hey, I need something for this standard,“ and it was like, boom, there it is. So, we just kind of got rolling and just kept going.

Q: Can you walk me through the process and steps you had to complete?

Lamm: There are 87 standards. You review the standard, really get detailed into it, see what it says you need. Then you just look at your policy and make sure it fits. If it doesn't fit, you may need to make a little policy adjustment. Then after you make those changes, you look for proofs. The proof shows that you're actually doing what you say you're doing in your policy. So, we'd have to research body camera or whatever other source there may be to show that.

A very simple example: we search prior to and after someone is transported in the back of a car. We made sure our policy says that, and then we would get video or photographs of a deputy searching the back of a car. Pretty simple, but some of them are very detailed and lengthy.

Q: Were there any notable changes you had to make during the process that stood out to you?

Kunkel: There wasn’t a lot. We had Lexipol policy in place, and it was pretty much in line. I think a lot of CALEA people use Lexipol as well, so there weren’t any drastic changes we had to make.

Lamm: Lexipol is a policy platform, and we pay them to not only provide us with our draft policies, but then they, as a company, will periodically look at court rulings and best practices and any updates that come out, and they send those policies to us. So, when you have a policy provider like that, it puts you in a good position then to dovetail that into an accreditation process.

Q: Was there anything you were impressed by as you went through this process?

Kunkel: Probably the most impressive thing out of it was, as he took this on and the other staff teamed up to make it happen, how it was just this constant priority. They never took their foot off the gas in going through it. It's a daunting process, and they powered through it. It was impressive.

Lamm: I liked knowing, too, that we're fine tuning ourselves to be a little better, because there were small things we had to change. You're always looking at, how can we do better? Here's a small thing we can do to make ourselves better.

Q: What does having this accreditation change for the department going forward?

Lamm: I think it just reflects on us that we're a professional organization. You know, that we've allowed somebody else to come in from the outside and take a look at how we do business, in all the nooks and crannies of our organization.

Kunkel: We stress professionalism constantly, even an email reminder to people about what we expect for everybody to do on a day-to-day basis. You have to have the policies in place to back that up. Going through the accreditation process is showing that those two pieces are working, providing that reassurance to the public that we take all aspects of our organization seriously.

Policy development can seem, maybe, boring, but at the end of the day, it's the foundation and the guidelines for what we do every day, and to show the public that we also invest in policy development and we’re always looking, like he said, at where can we improve? What do we need to improve? A lot of it, I think, was just reassuring that we're doing things the right way.

Lamm: It was kind of neat, too. The assessor that we worked with, there were several occasions where he saw a form we were using, or a procedure, where he said, ”Hey, I'm going to steal this and take this back to the organization I work for, because I really like the way you guys do that.”

Q: What was the assessment process with the assessor?

Lamm: Once I was finished, the assessor and I would email back and forth, and he would go through every single one make sure that the standards were in line with what the policy said. If I needed to make adjustments, I would. Once we got through all those, then he came and spent half a day here doing an on-site assessment, interviewing different staff, taking a look at the evidence room and different locations, and just making sure that what we said we were doing, we were actually doing.

Q: Is there anything else you want to add or that you want people to know about the accreditation?

Kunkel: I’m very proud of the work that Major Lamm did. Maybe the overarching theme, I think, is the just the reassurance of the public that not only we take day-to-day law enforcement services and everything else that we do seriously, but policy development really is key to a successful organization, and this is a reassuring way to deliver on that promise.

Comments: (319) 398-8328; emily.andersen@thegazette.com