Securing Maryland's houses of worship

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), Aug 11, 2006 by Louis Llovio

Marc Hess believes you can never be completely safe.

Considering that Hess is president and chief executive of Baltimore's Kipp Visual and Security Systems, the comment seems strange.

But Hess knows a large portion of his clientele is well aware of this fact and, yet, makes an active decision to keep their buildings open and accessible.

A large percentage of Kipp's clients are synagogues and churches looking to balance the need of providing spiritual guidance while keeping congregants and parishioners safe.

Hess points to what happened recently in Seattle when a Muslim gunman, angry about the ongoing hostilities between Israel and Lebanon, burst into a Jewish community center and shot six people, killing one.

Press reports on the incident indicate that the center had security procedures in place.

Look, Hess said, short of building a 40-foot wall around your building and erecting bomb barriers, you can't keep someone who wants to hurt you out.

And, he added as an aside, building the wall and barrier would go against what a religious organization is all about.

But that doesn't mean religious institutions can't protect themselves.

Kipp has installed security systems for Baltimore congregations Oheb Shalom, Beth El and Baltimore Hebrew.

Citing security concerns, Hess would not discuss specific arrangements at the synagogues and would talk only in general terms about the equipment.

Using digital technology, he said, cameras are still the best tool for synagogues or any organization.

With the capabilities of DVR, digital recording, Kipp can set up a closed-circuit television system that is specifically designed for a client. By placing cameras in hot zones like doorways and windows, the cameras can be programmed to set off alarms if someone enters a space without proper access. Guards can identify the intruder and alert police while the entire incident is recorded.

DVR can be your eyes, Hess remarked.

DVR can also be attached to access control.

The benefit of access control, he said, is that you know at all times who is coming in and who is going out.

Access control, Hess said, is specifically important for organizations that have day care. Children are common terror targets.

With the access control, a synagogue can monitor everyone entering a temple and keep track of their congregants.

But, Hess cautioned, the million-dollar question is: Do you want to make the entire congregation wear identification badges to get in and out? This is the balance between keeping a place of worship open and keeping worshipers safe.

Rabbi Robert Jacobs of Temple Adas Shalom in Havre de Grace said that making security too restrictive defeats the purpose of what a religious sanctuary is supposed to be.

You have to take appropriate precautions, but you have to decide at what price, he said. You don't want to affect the feeling that a synagogue, or any place of worship, is a safe haven.

Taking the safety and peace of mind away from the sanctuary is letting the terrorists win, he declared. Creating that anxiety is part of the terror.

But Jacob's altruistic views don't stop him from taking security measures at his synagogue. We have them, he said, we just don't talk about them.

Coming together

This balance between keeping congregants safe and providing a place of worship led some synagogues to unite to find ways to balance the issues.

Four years ago a group of Jewish organizations came together to found the Secure Communities Network (SCN).

The organization's objective is to establish a coordinated approach to critical safety and security needs, including expeditious, proactive planning and establishing common standards for improving security at the national and local levels.

Some members of the Jewish community found the threat significant enough to merit attention from the highest levels.

The world we live in is a dangerous place, wrote Rabbi Jerome Epstein, executive vice president of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, an organization with more than 1.5 million members. We in the Jewish community have a particularly strong need to learn to protect our institutions and our communities.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security agrees.

In a 2004 background briefing, a senior intelligence official said that law enforcement sources had discovered that al-Qaeda was actively studying security procedures - security desks, guards, building access - and trailing employees at religious organizations, primarily synagogues, to find loopholes in their security. But not everyone agrees synagogues are targeted by al- Qaeda.

Arthur Gerringer, a terrorism expert and security consultant for the Inter-Sec Group in San Antonio, Texas, believes that the threat to synagogues is not from worldwide terrorist organizations, but from crazed lone gunmen in their neighborhoods.

He said that a group like al-Qaeda looks for high-profile targets with low risks where they can inflict massive death.

What Jewish groups need to be wary of, he said, is an individual.

You can't stop a lone twisted mind, he said. It's impossible.