This week the Suffern Police Department was recognized as an Officially Accredited Law Enforcement Agency in New York State. 

For the past 2 1/2 years, the department voluntarily went through this acceditation process by updating all of it's policies, rules and regulations as well as several other changes including evidence handling and investigations.

In late October, three state assessors spent three days at the Suffern Police Department going over all of their operations and just this week the department found out that they were approved.  The Accreditation process is governed by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services who have 132 standards that must be met by an agency in order to be accredited. 

In New York state approximately 25% of the police agencies are accredited.  In Rockland County the Towns of Clarkstown, Orangetown, Ramapo, Stony Point and the Rockland County Sheriff's Department have attained this status.  "By complying with all of these standards we feel that we can better serve the public which is the objective of policing and the public can rest assured that they have a professional police department serving them," said Chief Clarke Osborne.  

Suffern's accreditation program was managed by Lt. John Bonkoski and Sgt. Jon DiRoma.