Richard Meier is the Deputy Director of Public Safety for Hunter College in New York City. His agency is responsible for the safety of 25,000 students and another 5,000 staff and faculty at five campuses located throughout Manhattan. From 1971 to 1998 he was a police officer with the Ridgewood, New Jersey Police Department, a CALEA accredited agency. He worked through the ranks in various positions within the Department and attained a Bachelors Degree in Public Safety from William Paterson College. Rich served as the initial Accreditation Manager for his agency and led them to a successful accreditation award in 1996. From 1993 to 1998 he also performed the duties of President of the New Jersey Police Accreditation Coalition (NJPAC). In 1993 the PAC only had about eight members, significantly different from today’s organization. In 1996 after his agency was accredited Rich became a CALEA assessor and performed many national on-sites.

He retired from Ridgewood PD as a Lieutenant in 1998 and in 1999 joined CALEA in Fairfax Virginia in the capacity of Program Manager. As a Program manager, Rich enjoyed assisting law enforcement and communications agencies across the country through the accreditation process. He also had an active role as a trainer at each of the CALEA conferences and started off by presenting “Introduction to Law enforcement Accreditation”. At later conferences taught “Assessor Refresher” and “Preparing for an On-Site”. During 2000 and 2002 Rich was on the task force that developed the Commissions Recognition Program and the Training Academy Accreditation Program. Rich was also part of the strategies group that originally began modifying on-sites to include panel discussions and mail off files. While with the Commission he was also the liaison with many of the Coalitions across the country. In 2003, family matters called for him to move back up to NJ and he had to reluctantly leave the Commission.

At the present time Rich is very active with the New Jersey Public Safety Accreditation Coalition and is the East Region Vice President which encompasses the Metro New York agencies that are accredited or in the process of. He assists in performing “mock” assessments both in New Jersey and New York. Rich continues to be an active national assessor and has carried out numerous accreditation on-sites in law enforcement, communications, and training academies. At the present time he is working with his own agency to become CALEA Recognized.

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