Northern Virginia Cabinet Community Day
What We Do
The Secretary of Public Safety provides guidance to 14 state agencies, with over 22,000 employees. Here's a sample of what we do:
- Enforce criminal, highway safety, and alcoholic beverage and tobacco laws;
- Teach or train approximately 18,000 adults and 1,750 youths each year;
- Protect public safety through confinement, treatment and re-entry preparation of more than 31,000 felons and through the supervision, treatment and monitoring of over 55,000 people on parole or probation;
- Provide technical assistance, research and training for law enforcement agencies, community fire departments and prosecutors;
- Plan and coordinate the state's emergency preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation efforts;
- Train over 14,000 fire fighters;
- Investigate crimes and test crime scene evidence;
- Train more than 8,200 Army and Air National Guard members; and,
- Provide services to Virginia's 740,000 veterans.
Public Safety Employee Disaster Assistance Program
The Commonwealth has enacted new legislation that offers financial assistance to public safety responders. Section 44-146.17 in the Code of Virginia states that public safety employees who respond to a disaster can receive assistance from the state under the following conditions:
- The Governor has declared a state of emergency.
- The employee is actively involved in response and recovery efforts for the disaster.
- The employee experiences extreme personal or family hardship and has supporting documentation.
Each employee can receive up to $2,500 each month for up to three months, but cannot receive more than $7,500 total. The Commonwealth is offering these funds to fill unmet needs that insurance, charitable contributions and any other available disaster funds do not cover. The approval of assistance and amounts awarded are at the discretion of the Governor or his designee, and all such decisions are final. Temporary or contract support employees are not eligible.
Applications and program guidance are available at http://www.vaemergency.com/recover/index.cfm.
