FORT LEONARD WOOD, Mo. — Officials with the Department of Defense Peace Officer Standards and Training Agency presented certificates at a ceremony April 24 in the Military Police Regimental Room at the John B. Mahaffey Museum Complex, certifying that both the Army’s and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s law enforcement standards and training meet with the DOD’s standards.
The program was established in 2021, officials said, with the goal to mirror how local and state law enforcement partners develop, accredit and certify law enforcement standards and training — all in an effort to enhance the quality of law enforcement across the DOD. It requires the applying organization to meet or exceed established standards, including POST certification oversight policies; initial and sustainment training programs; approved medical and physical fitness standards; weapons qualification; and meeting all requirements set forth in DOD Instruction 5525.15, “Law Enforcement Standards and Training in the DOD.” It is also the highest honor a law enforcement agency can receive from the POST Commission.
Presenting the awards was Maceo Franks, director of the POST commission and chief of the Law Enforcement Division within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security.
“(The POST Commission is) charged with the responsibility of providing oversight and also governance for DOD law enforcement training,” Franks said. “One of the honors and privileges that we also have is we’re fortunate enough to recognize those service components that have met the threshold for compliance and met the threshold for law enforcement excellence — and therefore, have met the threshold for the highest award that we can actually give for DOD law enforcement, and that’s the DOD POST Commission certification. That award, that recognition, does not come lightly. It takes a lot of success to be able to pull that off.”
Accepting on behalf of the Army’s law enforcement efforts was Brig. Gen. Sarah Albrycht, U.S. Army Military Police School commandant, and accepting on behalf of the NGA was Tom Fambrough, chief of police.
Albrycht said the certification helps “underwrite the trust that is put in us every single day.”
“It comes down to the trust of the American people,” she said, “that when we do our job, we are doing it to the absolute standard.”
Another benefit to the certification is its reputation outside military installations, Albrycht noted.
“We have reciprocity with 19 states, where they accept this credential and they say, ‘Hey, we’re going to make them law enforcers in our local communities,’” Albrycht said. “We have a standard that we can hand to others and say, ‘We train our Soldiers to this standard.’ And that state says, ‘We accept that standard. We’ll add our state regulatory training on top of it and get them out there’ … We are a pipeline for great law enforcers, who leave here and police communities across the nation.”
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