Chair: William Burton
Committee Members: Gordon Burrows; Ken Jenkins; Michael Kaplowitz; Vito Pinto; Bernice Spreckman; Suzanne Swanson
Staff: Chris Giliberti
The mission of the Committee on Public Safety and Security is to ensure that Westchester residents enjoy the highest level of protection and security possible. The Committee reviews, evaluates and makes recommendations regarding a wide and varied range of services and departments that plan, coordinate and manage any activity that impacts the safety and well-being of citizens. These services include:
- Fire protection and emergency medical services, including functioning of the Mutual Aid system and Computer-Aided Dispatch; the fire training center; the indoor firing range/classroom facility for the County’s police, probation, correction and investigation units; and, the County’s emergency communications center;
- Police protection, including review of highway patrol levels, personnel levels and operation of specialized police units such as the detective bureau, fraud squad and bomb squad;
- County correctional facilities, including review of personnel levels, operations and equipment needs;
- Disaster preparedness and emergency management, including overseeing the operations of the County’s Department of Emergency Services; reviewing the Indian Point emergency preparedness plan; and, coordinating services among various levels of government;
- Protection of the County’s special facilities including the County’s courthouse, the Westchester County Airport, the Michaelian Office Building and the County’s operations center for emergency management;
- Criminal justice and law enforcement issues as they emerge in the ordinary course of County operations; and,
- The County’s Special Operations Task Force, made up of regional teams of career and volunteer firefighters and emergency service personnel, capable of responding quickly to extraordinary disasters that are beyond the response capacity of local departments. These teams are trained in trench or rope rescues and hazardous materials clean-up and have the expertise to deal with chemical, biological or radiological agents of mass destruction.
