WPCNR POLICE GAZETTE. From Inspector Daniel Jackson, White Plains Department of Public Safety. October 4, 2004 (EDITED):  A first-in-the-nation public safety summit will convene Thursday, October 14, 2004 from 9 am to 5 pm in White Plains at the Pace University graduate center, 1 Martine Avenue. The conference will feature presentations by senior public safety officials from Phoenix, Charlotte-Mecklenburg and the White Plains Department of Public Safety on the issue of coordinating public safety efforts, followed by discussion.

Mayor Joseph Delfino of White Plains, (Left)  with Deputy Public Safety Commissioner Charles Jennings intoducing the coordinated, newly commissioned Police and Fire emergency response vehicles in July, which respond as a team to fast-breaking emergency events. Photo WPCNR News Archive.

Federal homeland security and domestic preparedness officials, plus high-level police, fire, EMS and private sector executives from mid-sized cities with populations between 50,000 and 250,000 throughout New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have been invited to attend by the cosponsors: the White Plains Department of Public Safety (which coordinates its police and fire bureaus under a Public Safety Commissioner); two leading national organizations, the Police Executive Research Forum and the International Association of Fire Chiefs; and Pace University, through its Edwin G. Michaelian Institute for Public Policy and Management. One hundred have signed up to attend the conference as of this date, which is free to officials who were invited. The conference is not open to the public.

Promising models of coordination already exist, notably in White Plains, New York, Phoenix, Arizona and Charlotte-Mecklenberg, North Carolina. To encourage officials to explore these and other models, deliberately postponing New York City’s unique issues for a later day, the organizers have invited a who's who of  public safety to share in a series of presentations.

 From the recent report of the national 9/11 commission to the McKinsey and Co. examination of on New York City’s response to the disaster, 9/11 has spotlighted the importance of police, fire and EMS coordination for homeland security and emergencies -- and on the difficulties of achieving it.

 “Building blocks.”

 Broader context will come from two nationally-recognized experts on emergency preparedness -- Arnold Howitt, Ph.D., executive director of the Taubman Center for State & Local Government at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and Jerome Hauer, former director of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Emergency Management under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and now director of the Response to Emergencies and Disasters Institute at George Washington University Medical Center.

White Plains Commissioner of Public Safety Dr. Frank Straub at the Department of Public Safety at recent Promotion Ceremony for Fire Fighters.

Photo, WPCNR News Archive.

“We hope to help leaders in public safety identify collaborative models that police, fire, EMS, municipal governments and the private sector can use to prepare for and respond to critical incidents,” said White Plains Public Safety Commissioner Frank Straub, the former Deputy Commissioner of Training and Assistant Commissioner in the New York City Police Department’s Counter Terrorism Bureau. He holds a PhD. in criminal justice and is an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City.

“Police, fire and EMS leaders haven’t dropped the ball,” added Brian Nickerson, Director of Pace’s Michaelian Institute – “it’s that few institutional frameworks have been established to help them jointly identify the issues, get feedback from one another and coordinate their efforts into a plan.”

The conference will stress “building blocks” that can lead to opportunities for collaborative emergency preparedness such as routine police-fire problem solving, “Weed-and-Seed” initiatives, safe housing, and joint all-hazards planning.

New foundation created.

The conference is an early result of a three-way partnership created this spring between Pace, the White Plains Department of Public Safety and a new foundation, The Foundation for Emergency Preparedness, established with donations from members of the Fenway Charitable Foundation and other private benefactors.

Pace’s Michaelian Institute has been working with municipal governments to address these issues for the last three years, having presented a half-day conference on emergency preparedness in 2002. More recently it worked with Commissioner Straub and the new foundation to conduct a focus group of emergency responders to highlight issues in need of further attention.

“We hope this model, and variations of it, will set a pattern for and help to facilitate improved public safety coordination all across the country,” said Straub.

 As of today, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety said "We are expecting around 100 attendees or so, and a schedule of speakers and topics will be forthcoming. The topics will be geared towards theory and policy rather than technical aspects."

Officials attending from out of town will be accomodated at the Crowne Plaza. To register for the conference, contact Inspector Daniel Jackson or Detective Donnelly at (914) 422-6358.  The summit is free to invited attendees, who are from the "executive levels" of the organizations the Department wanted to participate in the conference, and "a  few select partners from the corporate world."

The Summit is not open to the public, but is open to the media.

Date:               Thursday, October 14, 2004

Time:              9:00 am – 5:00 pm

Location:        Pace University Westchester Graduate Center

                        1 Martine Avenue

                        White Plains, New York 10601

Title:                “Building Sound Homeland Security Foundations: Effective Models

                         for Mid-sized U.S. Cities”