Amesbury - The Amesbury Police Department is on the doorstep of getting re-certified by the Massachusetts Police Accreditation Coalition.

“There are some minor fixes that need to be done,” said Glenn Chaput, the department’s accreditation officer. “But we are going to be recommended for re-accreditation on March 6.”

If approved, this will be the second time Amesbury’s police department has been re-certified since its initial accreditation in 2003. The department was the third to be initially honored in this manner by the state. Re-accreditation is done every three years.

“The three assessors we had were very impressed with the policies and procedures we had in place,” Chaput added. “I’m very relieved it’s done.”

Accreditation is a self-initiated process by which police departments strive to meet and maintain standards that have been established for the profession. The assessors are fellow police professionals. There is a set of 252 mandatory standards and 123 optional standards that reflect critical areas of police management, operations and technical support activities, including policies and procedures.

As a smaller department, Amesbury had to meet all mandatory standards and 60 percent of the optional standards. Among the areas scrutinized are police station records, vehicles, personnel training, the use of weapons and station security.

The department actually met about 85 percent of the optional standards, Chaput said. It can also expect a review in about a year-and-a-half.

Although the evaluation is done, Chaput still has to keep up with the department’s written policy and procedure manual, a mammoth document. In preparation for the assessors’ visit, he wrote an additional 10 policies to comply with changing laws and the fifth edition of standards set by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc. (CALEA).

State civil service officials will scrap the results of a Boston firefighter promotional exam after an investigation of cheating allegations showed that numerous firefighters talked during the test, brought cellphones into the testing room, and took unusually frequent trips to the men's room, say two public officials briefed on the probe results.

Investigators from the state Human Resources Division interviewed 90 percent of the 186 firefighters who took the test Nov. 17 at a Quincy middle school, but they were unable to prove that any individual firefighters cheated, said the officials, who were briefed separately and spoke on condition of anonymity because they did not have permission to speak publicly.

Nonetheless, state officials determined that some firefighters acted inappropriately during the test and may have cheated, the officials said, leading to the decision to require another test.

A new test date has not been set. While more than 700 firefighters around the state took promotional exams that day, there were indications of possible cheating only at the Quincy site, where the exam for the Boston Fire Department test was administered. Only those firefighters will be required to retake the test.

The probe was prompted by an anonymous complaint in December that a group of Boston firefighters took turns going into a men's room at the Quincy middle school and sent answers via text message on their cellphones to colleagues in the testing room.

But the state's Human Resources Division, which administers civil service exams, does not have the power to subpoena phone records and none of the test-takers volunteered to submit them for review, one of the two officials said. As a result, the investigation did not produce evidence of cheating. None of the firefighters contacted refused to discuss the test with investigators; one of the officials said 10 percent of test-takers could not be reached.

The cheating allegations, reported by the Globe on Jan. 6, gave another black eye to the Boston Fire Department, which has been embroiled in controversy over possible impairment in the deaths of two firefighters in a restaurant blaze in August. In addition, there has been an 18-month-long dispute in contract talks, with the union opposed to drug and alcohol testing without a significant raise. And the Globe has reported that fire personnel have enriched themselves by exploiting policies for disability pensions and sick leave.

Boston Fire Commissioner Roderick Fraser Jr. said last night that he is disappointed by the findings of the exam investigation.

"I don't believe this behavior is indicative of Boston firefighters," Fraser said in a telephone interview. "I had hoped that the people who studied hard and showed up and took the test and did the right thing would not be punished for the actions of a few."