Best Plan is Flexible, Ongoing Security

Within minutes of last week’s shooting at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., Temple Isaiah on West Pico Boulevard received an alert from its security service indicating that the on-site security guards should implement high-alert procedures. By the end of the day, the LAPD had sent an officer out to meet personally with the director.

“A solid security plan has designed into it the ability to ramp up and ramp down, to be heightened at one point and lowered at another,” said Steven Sheinberg, national director of the Anti-Defamation League’s community security program.

Not every organization has a security program that is as well-funded and well-implemented as the one at Temple Isaiah, whose lay-lead security committee works with private companies and local law enforcement to ensure the security of its 1,100 member families, including students at its preschool and religious school. Randy Schwab, Isaiah’s executive director, said a Department of Homeland Security grant helped put some of the program in place.

But having a comprehensive plan that can be adjusted as current events require — which takes time and ongoing commitment — shouldn’t be confused with throwing together a security plan from scratch after a violent wake-up call.

“Spasmodic security decision-making in reaction to panic is the worst thing an institution can do,” Sheinberg said. “You spend money and time, you spend good will and you spend energy for very limited results.”

Sheinberg said his office becomes flooded with calls from Jewish institutions when tragic violence jolts the community, as it did in the wake of the shooting at the North Valley Jewish Community Center ten years ago this August, or the July 2006 shooting at Seattle’s Jewish Federation, which took the life of one woman and injured five others.

“Right after each incident happens, institutions around the country become very interested in security and go to a great expense to enhance their security. Then, in the days and weeks afterward they start losing their will to keep security in place,” Sheinberg said. But even though it can be adjusted in times of crisis, security needs to be an ongoing program.

Last Wednesday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, white supremacist James Von Brunn allegedly shot and killed security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns, before two other security guards shot and severely wounded the gunman. Only one other person was injured, by shattered glass.

Following the shooting, the ADL reported a burst of activity on neo-Nazi Web sites and urged Jewish institutions to go into heightened security mode.

While that shouldn’t mean panicked planning, organizations that do not have security plans in place can use such occurrences as a reminder of the need to initiate a deliberate process, Sheinberg said.

He encourages institutions to create a committee with lay leadership and professionals to assess the security situation, determine what sort of funding is necessary and available, and create a plan that balances an institution’s desire to be open and embracing with its need to protect the people inside.

Commitment to security doesn’t necessarily mean spending a lot of money, Sheinberg said. Simple steps that need to be taken include making sure outside lights are working, locking doors and knowing who is in the building, as well as trimming bushes that could conceal someone and confirming that any existing technology — cameras or alarms — work.

Getting everyone in the building involved is also key.

“Security isn’t just a physical thing,” said Amanda Susskind, ADL’s regional director in the Pacific Southwest. “Security is also a state of mind. I always tell people who are on staff in a Jewish institution that everyone is a security guard. If you see something unusual, don’t assume someone else is dealing with it. Don’t be afraid to report it, and don’t be afraid to call the police.”

The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles has a close relationship with the LAPD, according to Federation president John Fishel, and has its own tight security. Guards monitor the parking garage and building, visitors must walk through metal detectors, and staff in the building must meet visitors in the lobby and escort them upstairs — a procedure often criticized as a waste of time and overly cautious.

But Fishel says the Los Angeles Federation is often held up as a paradigm for how to secure a community building.

“We have a modicum of security in this building, and some would say it’s too secure. But we believe it is in the interest of the people who work here and who visit the building as clients or volunteers that their safety is utmost on our minds,” Fishel said.

Of course, as demonstrated in Washington last week, no building is ever fully secure.

But that doesn’t mean the community should live in fear, said Dalia Golan, chair of the Hebrew Language department at Harkham Hillel Hebrew Academy in Beverly Hills. Just the week before the shooting, Golan led the school’s eighth-grade trip to Washington, D.C., during which a visit to the Holocaust museum was one of the most moving and impactful stops.

Golan said she would not hesitate to take another group of students on a similar trip.

“If we decided every time there is a shooting that we should back up, it is letting them get their purpose,” Golan said. “We have to move on. We can’t give up to terror. If you do that, then they are the winners.”