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
March 6, 2012
A year after the late-afternoon snowfall of January 26, 2011, brought traffic on the region's roadways to a standstill during the evening commute and left...
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News
November 9, 2011
Special COG Committee proposes new Regional Incident Coordination Program to ensure that area officials better coordinate decisions before and during major...
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News
November 4, 2011
Andrews, who served as Chair of the Steering Committee on Incident Management and Response (IMR), discusses group's final report and key recommendation.
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News
September 15, 2011
Even as metropolitan Washington’s population continues to increase rapidly – growing by about 15 percent in the past ten years – crime in the region has...
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News
July 11, 2011
It’s been a while since the last edition so we figured it’s time for another Region Forward smorgasbord – a collection of some our favorite and/or most read...