Most police departments haven’t contacted commission about certifications

Two weeks out from the deadline for law enforcement agencies to submit the first round of information on officers to be recertified, only about one-third of all departments have even interacted with the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission.

Officers with last names starting with a letter A through H, including chiefs, reserve officers, and retired officers who work details, must be certified by July 1 and the POST Commission, the state's new policing accountability body, has set a June 15 deadline for all agencies to submit information about those officers.

Executive Director Enrique Zuniga told POST Commission members Wednesday morning that 172 agencies have interacted in some way with the commission's online portal through which officer information is to be submitted. That leaves about 294 agencies that have not yet reached out to the POST Commission for the credentials necessary to access that portal.

"We expect, of course, that given the number of agencies that we are potentially dealing with — we have to assume that at least every agency might have at least one individual whose name is A to H — so I believe we'll be interacting with all 460-plus agencies," Zuniga said. "That leaves a lot of agencies that still have to obtain credentials, and of course, submit information. And then of course for us to validate that information. So we expect that the next couple of weeks will be rather busy."

The POST Commission is expected to vote Wednesday morning on its proposed regulations guiding the recertification process. Those regulations, Zuniga said, allow agencies to seek extensions of the June 15 info submission deadline.

"It is possible that we will get a number of requests for extensions. But I want to highlight here, that doesn't mean that they just send us an email and they're done," he said. "We still need agencies to provide a roster of the individuals to be recertified and submit that information in the submission template."