Have greeters and ushers stand outside where they can welcome folks and keep an eye on the parking lot and people as they approach. Update the locks. Have an evacuation plan.
Those are just a few simple and inexpensive ways to make houses of worship safer, Jon Richeson, a protective-security adviser with the Department of Homeland Security said.
Richeson was among a dozen or so local and federal law-enforcement officials who spoke about improving security with a group of religious leaders who gathered recently at the Curry Temple CME in Seattle’s Central District.
The meeting was held, fittingly some speakers said, at a church that was defaced in April by vandals who put swastikas and racial slurs on the walls.
Churches, mosques, temples and other houses of worship have been targets of hate crimes for a long time, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Bruce Miyake — from the 1963 bombing in Birmingham, Ala., which killed four girls, to the shooting at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin four years ago and the deadly rampage at a Charleston, S.C. church last year.
In some ways, religious sanctuaries are easy targets: they have lots of people coming and going, they advertise where they’ll be and when, and they strive to be active participants in their communities.
“It’s a delicate dance that’s unique for houses of worship,” Anti-Defamation League regional director Hilary Bernstein said. “You can be warm and welcoming and focused on security at the same time, but you can’t do it alone.”
Richeson said 4 percent of shooting events since 2009 have occurred at one of the 325,000 religious centers in the United States.
“A gathering of people of a particular faith becomes a target of opportunity,” he said.
Richeson and other speakers recommended a few other low-cost measures, such as creating security committees and being aware of news events that could impact the congregation’s safety.
He also urged religious leaders to build bridges with local enforcement officers and to call the Department of Homeland Security for a free security evaluation.
The Rev. Beverly Jackson, the pastor of Curry Temple, said she was distressed that “in this country in 2016 we have to have this conversation” but also that she was delighted law-enforcement leaders were there to show support for the faith community and to “help us combat bigotry, hatred and racism.”
