TRENTON — A four-day conference that begins Monday will bring together first responders from different disciplines as well as state, county and municipal law enforcement and counter-terrorism officials from New Jersey’s six Northeastern counties to focus on improved planning for terrorism prevention and response measures in the region, Attorney General Peter C. Harvey said today.

Approximately 75 emergency management, emergency medical services, hazardous materials response, fire, counter-terrorism and law enforcement officials from Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Morris, Passaic and Union counties, as well as from Newark and Jersey City, will undergo training and team building to strengthen the region’s ability to prevent and respond to terrorist incidents and other disasters. The conference, co-sponsored by New Jersey’s Domestic Security Preparedness Task Force, the Attorney General’s Office and the Police Institute at Rutgers-Newark, and held at the Rutgers-Newark Center for Law and Justice, is the first training session that will be held for each of the state’s five homeland security regions that have been designated by the Task Force. Instructors and facilities are being provided by the Police Institute.

“These training seminars for key homeland security personnel are another first for New Jersey and demonstrate once again how our homeland security initiatives are on the cutting edge of states’ efforts to protect their citizens,” said Governor James E. McGreevey. “New Jersey operates on the principle that regional approaches, mutual aid and teamwork are essential to safeguarding our communities against terrorism. But these are things that do not just take care of themselves. We have to work at them through uniform planning and training,” he said.

“We are bringing together the people who have the awesome responsibility for preventing terrorist attacks and for responding if an attack were to occur,” said Attorney General Harvey, who chairs the Domestic Security Preparedness Task Force, the cabinet-level body that develops New Jersey’s homeland security policy and coordinates its implementation. “If we expect them to work together as a team in these efforts, we must plan together, anticipate together and train together.”

Participants in this first four-day seminar are from the six-county region that has received nearly $44 million in federal homeland security grants as part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI). This Northeastern New Jersey UASI region represents more than 15 percent of New Jersey’s total area and more than 44 percent of the state’s total population. In addition, the area incorporates many core elements of New Jersey’s transportation infrastructure and is also dense with chemical manufacturing plants and other critical facilities.

Under the auspices of the state’s Domestic Security Preparedness Task Force, the UASI group has been working cooperatively through a multi-disciplinary Urban Area Working Group. This group has conducted a vulnerability assessment of the area, developed a strategy to address those vulnerabilities and a strategy to allocate grant funds to meet those goals and objectives. The Urban Area Working Group’s strategy for the region is focusing on protecting five areas:

• Transportation assets;
• Chemical and pharmaceutical facilities;
• “Soft targets” such as shopping malls and financial centers;
• Regional water resources; and
• Hospitals.

To add capacity for prevention and response initiatives in these areas, the group is focusing on:

• Providing survivable interoperable communications capabilities among UASI response agencies;
• Target hardening critical infrastructure and vulnerable sites in the region;
• Establishing an early warning system for detecting the release of specific biological and chemical agents, as well as radioactive materials; and
• Developing a regionalized capacity to respond to mass casualties in the event of an attack.

Attorney General Harvey said that similar training seminars for the other four homeland security regions that the state has designated will take place later this year. In addition to the Northeastern New Jersey UASI region, the state’s four other regions for homeland security planning and implementation are designated as follows:

• Northwest: Sussex, Warren and Hunterdon counties.
• Central: Somerset, Middlesex, Mercer and Monmouth counties.
• Delaware River: Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, Salem and Cumberland counties.
• Shore: Ocean, Atlantic and Cape May counties.


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Note to editors and reporters: The seminar’s Monday morning session (8:15 a.m. to noon) is open to reporters. Attorney General Harvey will open the seminar with remarks at 8:15 a.m. The session will be held at the Rutgers-Newark Center for Law and Justice, 123 Washington Street, Newark, room B25 (on the center’s lower level).