Homeland Security & Public Safety
Public Safety
In the multi-jurisdictional metropolitan Washington region, ensuring safe communities for residents and visitors requires coordination across various agencies on a wide range of issues, including planning, response, resource sharing, and crime prevention. Throughout its history, COG has championed this coordination, such as its ongoing support of regional mutual aid agreements. These agreements allow police, fire, and other emergency resources to be shared across jurisdictional borders and have aided regional responses from the 1968 civil disturbances following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the 9/11 terrorist attacks to presidential inaugurations.
Additionally, COG brings together the region’s various public safety disciplines, including fire and emergency medical services (EMS), law enforcement, emergency management, health, public affairs, and information technology to address public safety issues at the regional scale, ranging from gangs to drunk driving to fire safety to emergency communication.
News & Multimedia
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News
January 28, 2019
Alcohol-related crashes, injuries, and drunk driving arrests all decreased in the metropolitan Washington area in 2017, according to the new “How Safe Are Our...
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News
November 14, 2018
A COG task force released a report containing seven priority recommendations to improve the quick and safe resolution of traffic incidents regionwide. The...
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News
September 12, 2018
Crimes against persons and property—or total Part I offenses—declined for the fifth consecutive year in metropolitan Washington, according to the COG Annual...
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News
July 31, 2018
COG public safety members traveled to Israel to learn firsthand from subject matter experts in the fields of counter-terrorism, cybersecurity, and emergency...
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News
March 28, 2018
COG is helping coordinate twenty jurisdictions in the region to simultaneously issue a test message to the public through the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA)...