The Fairfax County Police Department is on track to meet staffing goals by the end of the decade, if it can maintain recent hiring momentum.
“We feel really comfortable about where we are,” Police Chief Kevin Davis said in a briefing for the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors’ Safety and Security Committee on Tuesday (May 20).
Starting next week, Fairfax County Public Schools will begin rolling out a pilot program intended to prevent guns and other weapons from being brought into school buildings.
Randomly selected high schools in the district will see the installation of OpenGate detectors at the building’s main doors, allowing students, faculty and visitors to be screened when entering the school.
While the future of foreign aid faces uncertainty, a Fairfax County-based disaster response task force has not yet felt trickle-down effects of ongoing cuts at the federal level.
Virginia Task Force 1 is operating like things are business as usual, even with the Trump administration moving to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), according to John Morrison, a planning manager for the task force.
Fairfax County staff have sketched out details of a series of bond referendums for the next five years that would raise just under $2 billion for facility construction and renovation projects.
With both economic uncertainty and higher interest rates causing headwinds, however, alterations could be possible — even likely.
Metro leaders are taking steps that could permit the transit agency to ban people from its property if they commit crimes or otherwise demonstrate what is deemed improper behavior.
The measure was first discussed publicly at a Jan. 30 meeting of the Metro Board of Directors’ safety and operations committee. An agency spokesman told FFXnow on Monday (March 3) that the discussion “remains ongoing.”
As Fairfax County officials work to fill an estimated $292.7 million budget shortfall in the next fiscal year, public safety services will bear a substantial brunt of potential cuts.
Of the $59.8 million in reductions proposed in the advertised budget, which was unveiled by County Executive Bryan Hill earlier this month, approximately $26.2 million will come from the police department, fire and rescue department, and sheriff’s office.
A new program launched by the Fairfax County Police Department hopes to take advantage of the increasing popularity of Ring doorbells and other at-home security systems.
Connect Fairfax County, announced by the department at the end of January, will allow law enforcement to leverage surveillance cameras to hopefully speed up investigations.
Undocumented immigrants in Fairfax County and elsewhere in Virginia could face threats on two fronts in the new year, with both national and state elected leaders proposing policies targeting that population.
As incoming president Donald Trump plans mass deportations, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin unveiled a budget proposal this week that would require local governments to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and withhold funding from those with cooperation-limiting policies, including Fairfax County.
Thanks to a grant of nearly $1 million, Fairfax County’s emergency response stands to capitalize on recent gains in artificial intelligence.
The county’s Department of Public Safety Communications (DPSC) is partnering with George Mason University’s Center for Resilient and Sustainable Communities (C-RASC) for a project that will embrace AI solutions to tackle challenges faced by emergency communications systems across the region.
Fairfax County Public Schools is set to allocate an additional $3.4 million to safety and security upgrades, drawing from surplus revenue identified in its mid-year budget review.
The funding includes $1.5 million from a class-action settlement with Juul, as well as higher-than-expected sales tax revenue and tuition payments from the City of Fairfax.
