Emergency Management and Security Planning


The following information was provided by the Anti-Defamation League's manual, Protecting Your Jewish Institution: Security Strategies for Today's Dangerous World.  To access the manual, please click here.  For additional information, contact your local ADL office.


Security Committees 


A security committee can help bring staff and leadership together to ensure that there is maximum “buy-in” to a security plan. Indeed, depending on the type of institution, professionals and leadership working together can help ensure that the institution’s wider constituency accept the plan and thus complies more readily with implemented changes –something that can mean the difference between effective solutions and failure. Moreover, leadership can work to reassure constituents, without revealing too much, that the institution takes security seriously. Thus, we suggest that security planning is a process that may be undertaken by a security committee.

 

Small and mid-size institutions


This manual was written with all size institutions - and all size budgets -in mind. Remember: many of the suggestions included in this manual are no-cost or relatively low-cost ideas (e.g., using ushers, re-keying locks for key control, etc.).

 

Security “philosophy”


Security is a long-term issue. It is not something that one can effectively address every time there is a new alert or increased sense of risk. Solutions implemented under such circumstances can be costly, less effective than solutions implemented as the result of careful planning. In other words, security is something to be addressed rationally and in a considered fashion, not reactively and out of fear.

 

Finally, a security expert can help you fully examine these issues, and create a plan to implement.