I took a
moment today to pause and reflect on a
number of thoughts and
emotions. One of them, from
a professional perspective, is what we’ve managed
to accomplish in the past
15 years. I
look at the almost $26M in federal homeland security grant
funding Chester County has either directly or indirectly benefited from
and
I ask myself what
have we accomplished?
Have we
made a difference? Are we any better prepared? The overwhelming
answer is:
Yes. We’ve accomplished a lot. We’ve made and continue
to make a difference. We are better prepared.
For one, our relationships with our partners
– both within the county borders and
out – are much stronger. Our region played
host to two major events thrusting Philadelphia
and our region
into the spotlight for flawless execution. We were deeply involved
in the planning for these events,
we
had unparalleled
information
and intelligence exchange, and
supported the City in ways
we would
have never imagined.
I think our emergency responders
and the emergency response
system is significantly stronger.
We
have been able to augment our
staff within the Chester County Department
of Emergency
Services to provide the service the emergency responders and
citizens deserve and
expect. To that
point, Chester County became the first local
jurisdiction in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to achieve full
Emergency Management Accreditation status
from the Emergency Management
Accreditation Program (EMAP),
no small
feat. The City of Philadelphia
is the only other local
jurisdiction to achieve the same status.
Our emergency responders have critical
tools and critical teams
at their disposal. The Automatic
License Plate Reader (ALPR) project
has helped identify stolen vehicles, lost
Alzheimer patients, Amber alert-wanted
vehicles, and
wanted subjects. These readers, installed on police cars throughout
the southeast Pennsylvania region,
scan
more than 25,000,000 license plates a year.
And specialty teams such as
the Chester County Rescue Task Force have significantly enhanced our
capabilities in-county and throughout
the region.
Thanks
to the support of the Chester County Board
of Commissioners, we have a state-of-the-art Public Safety Training Facility.
The
final phase, the indoor
Law Enforcement
Firing Range,
has
officially kicked
off
and work has begun. We now host more than
20,000 emergency responders and
community members a year at
the Campus.
Our communications
capabilities
– for emergency responders and
the public – have significantly improved. We have just
migrated to a new,
state-of-the-art
Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) System,
Mobile Data System, and
Mobile for Public Safety (MPS) System all
of which are giant
leaps forward
in technology and, more importantly,
responder safety. We have a new, state-of- the-art
radio
system providing 99.8%
portable, on-street
radio
coverage. We are implementing
unparalleled levels of
interoperability – to the
point that once fully implemented a police officer
will be able to pursue a criminal across
county boundaries and
never lose communication
with fellow officers or
their dispatcher and never having to touch
their radio.
The public
has benefited through a new public notification
system – Ready Chesco – providing
timely, accurate,
location-specific warnings
and
advisories. We also now
have the ability of
altering the public
using the Integrated
Public Alert Warning System
(IPAWS) and Wireless
Emergency Alerts (WEA) –
pushing life-saving alerts to roadside
signs, billboards, and cell phones.
And, finally, we have seen significant
benefit from the investments
made in the name of
“homeland security” from
an all-hazards
perspective.
Many of the relationships, training, and equipment obtained were utilized
in the February 2014
ice
storm. Everything from Traffic Sign
Boards
obtained for fire police, to shelters and
mass care for humans and animals, to the countless volunteers and teams
staffing support structures.
With that, thank you to the emergency responders,
the military, and
their families;
thank you to our elected officials; and, thank you
to our citizens for all you do every single
day. Your sacrifices are not
forgotten
and do not go unnoticed.
Robert J.
Kagel Director
September
11, 2016
