[The Candy Man on shul security - LNM]
Working in the lab in a research university means working late many nights. On Wednesday, as I left the lab around 9 PM, I passed a young woman, possibly a student, talking on a cell phone in the stairwell. It was completely dark outside. Leaving the building, I saw a dirty-looking, bearded man heading towards the building and poking his head in the trash cans outside. He proceeded to move gruffly towards the stairway exit and hang out around there. I knew that young woman could exit right at that spot at any moment. As I walked away, I turned and asked, "What are you looking for?" He looked surprised, and responded, "I don't know." I didn't want to fight the guy, so I kept moving, but I kept an eye on him. If he hadn't walked away from the building after a few minutes, I'd have called the campus police.
This isn't "Courtrooms of the Mind." We can't give these guys the benefit of the doubt here. This guy was probably nuts, potentially dangerous, and our campus is not secure at all. It bothers me. We've had so many shootings lately in America. We've had three this week, for god's sake. Five were killed at the Kirkwood city council meeting on February 7. Another two were murdered at Louisiana Tech the following day. And yesterday, February 14, five were slain at Northern Illinois University. The Virginia Tech massacre, when 32 innocents were killed for nothing, occurred almost a year ago. And what has changed?
All these deaths were preventable, and Jews are the ones who know how to do it best. After all, lunatics have been trying to kill our innocent civilians in Israel for decades. Prevention is highly successful -- about 10 out of every 11 attacks is foiled. This is because they have a security guard at every mall entrance and in front of every big building. These guys have a wand they use to check if you are packing heat before you walk through that door. Sometimes, the security guards have to give their lives to save the people inside, but it works. It wasn't always like this. I remember the days before the security guards, when crowded Tel Aviv nightclubs and Jerusalem street markets were being blown up on a regular basis. The security guards, and other measures, improved prevention success from 30% in 2001 to almost 90% in 2004 (a beautiful statistical analysis is publicly available at http://www.mideastweb.org/log/archives/00000298.htm).
It shocks me that you can walk onto the NY subway without getting waved down. That public buildings in the US are completely unprotected. That campuses and high school buildings, which are proven targets, are unchanged 10 months after Virginia Tech. It seems that since 9/11 the big response of the American government to "beef up security" in public places is to put up signs in the subway asking riders to be vigilant and report suspicious packages. In the meantime, they spend hundreds of Congress hours debating whether Bonds and Clemens are using steroids (clue to Congress: they are!). George Mitchell, yes the guy who came up with the Mitchell plan for Middle East peace, is now heading up the steroids investigation. Well, this is a waste of precious time and resources. Where is the Mitchell plan to prevent gun rampages?
There's no need to put very strict gun control laws into effect. That would just spin off another huge debate about whether these measures work. There is a sizeable community in this country that loves owning guns, and we want to work with them, not fight them. Instead, let's do something simple: start employing more security guards, with public funds, in malls, campuses, stadiums, and public transportation systems. Yes, it will cost money. Yes, it's worth it. In fact, we need more jobs like this in the USA. We are heading for a recession, and manufacturing jobs have all disappeared to China. When FDR faced the Great Depression, he countered it with job creation... be it building highways or managing national parks. Security guard jobs cannot be offshored. They just have to be created.
What works in Israel may not work exactly in America. Palestinian suicide bombers are a specific type of threat, and counter-intelligence (some provided by concerned Palestinian informants) has helped a lot in addition to security guards. So yes, it will take some thought to figure out exactly how to secure America's internal borders from the nut jobs who would use their Second Amendment rights to kill their fellow citizens. However, I do think that more can be done, and it's time we started demanding it from our public officials. As Jews, who have dealt with this before, it's our duty to step up to the plate and show them the way. Start by signing the petition: http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/Beef-Up-Security
17 comments:
It might be harder here.
People are more sensitive of their privacy being infringed than in Israel. I think we once had this discussion on Dovbear
When my wife was attending law school at night, the parking lot was quite large and if her car was parked at the outer end she would ask one of the campus security guards to walk her to the car. They were always nice about it, after all thats what they are paid for. Maybe candy man should have walked the young ladu to where she was going......Avi
Candy Man, How would we go about protecting our subways here in N.Y. City, it would be a nightmare. Yes Israel does it, but Israel is a much smaller country. If terrorists wanted to start blowing up subway cars here in America I have no idea how we could protect ourselves against that. As it is I get nervous when my wife takes the " Chus bus " into the city......Avi
In the wake of the VT shooting, a proposal at my university was floated to train and arm faculty and staff who volunteered. Given the size of the campus, there is no way to station enough security forces to prevent weapons from getting onto campus. Arming some of the staff may prevent or minimize the impact of school shootings.
I thought the proposal was a good idea, but the higher education community is skittish about weapons on campus. Everyone except police officers are forbidden to carry weapons on campus.
CM,
Can America rely on market forces alone to create the required number of trained guards to protect the public spaces?
In Israel military service is ubiquitous - would America have to bring back the draft to do what you propose?
There was no shooting at Louisiana Tech University, located in Ruston, La. The tragic event you refer to took place at Louisiana Technical College, a vo-tech school, in Baton Rouge, La.
I am a former security guard ("in my youth... in my youth" to borrow from the cop in Die Hard) and you can forget this idea right off.
Security guards are NOT there to provide physical security. Outside of a few small sectors which call for it, armed security is absolutely discouraged. Unarmed security is absolutely instructed NOT to get involved. That is the job of cops. Guards have no power of arrest, detention, investigation, etc. and are not properly trained for the above, and definitely not for the safety and protection of evidence.
Also, they are not trained in suspects' rights and the rules of evidence and all those things which can pooch a prosecution.
Further, they are NOT insured in most circumstances against the results of willful intervention. In general, most guards are unarmed and they are instructed to stay out of events, run for a phone out of firing range, and call the police.
You are essentially a walking target and the first to be executed by any serious offender bent on doing bad nastiness to innocent people. It's worse than being an Army soldier on patrol in Saudi Arabia during Gulf War One where they ordered guard deployment of soldiers with UNLOADED weapons.
A frightened heightened security atmosphere flies in the face of a free open society and it is exactly that thing which terrorists seek to bring about. The Patriot Act, Guantanamo, etc. are all things that the Islamic radicals, the various international Communists, and others who verbally abuse the American system have always smugly asserted are inevitable. In their minds, our freedom is inevitably doomed.
Tightening security will solve nothing. The committed wrong-doer will always succeed and the cost you put them to is in the end minimal versus what you lose to them.
You have to build a society in which people don't want to do those things. You have to make peace. You have to spread hope. Right now, we sell hopelessness, purposely created bad situations and the false non-solutions to them, and reinforce mutually the idea that we can't, instead of we can. That the sky is falling, rather than shining bright and blue above us. That in the end all is pointless, instead of that life is what you make of it.
We have met the enemy and they are us.
suitepotato,
An open society that isn't plagued by fear is an important goal, but I hope we keep two things clear:
1) Having a open society wouldn't have stopped this shooter: he was apparently an "outstanding student" who recently went off his medication. Mental illness won't be dissuaded by an open society.
2) Let's not confuse mentally insane shooters like this one with terrorists. I hate how indiscriminate we are in applying that label to every violent offender.
Candy Man,
You plan to install security guards (or homeland security police) throughout our nation's malls, clubs and transportation systems is not a good idea. First of all, it's questionable if this plan would even thwart an attack. (Terrorists could just go to Central Park, or the parking lot of the mall, or wait outside a stadium and blow people up leaving a game). Secondly, even if this was a good idea there simply isn't the political will in our country to make it happen. The plan you've proposed could not happen until bombs started going off in the U.S. on a regular basis. As you indicated in your post, Israel didn't tighten up security until the bombings became a regularity. Americans will not give up their freedoms easily, and rightfully so.
In the wake of the VT shooting, a proposal at my university was floated to train and arm faculty and staff who volunteered... I thought the proposal was a good idea, but the higher education community is skittish about weapons on campus.
What if security guards just had magnetic wands, not guns, the way they do in Israel? They'd wave people down as they enter a building to make sure they're not armed.
In Israel military service is ubiquitous - would America have to bring back the draft to do what you propose?
I believe Israeli security guards are not IDF officers. Please correct me if I'm wrong, ye Israelites (DrJ). So, this is unconnected to military service.
I am a former security guard ("in my youth... in my youth" to borrow from the cop in Die Hard) and you can forget this idea right off... Security guards are NOT there to provide physical security.
suitepotato, I appreciate your insight as a former security guard. Perhaps "security guard" is too loose a term. What I'd like to see is a cross between traditional security guard and cop. More like an Israeli security guard. Unarmed, with a wand to wave people down, trained to intervene physically.
The plan you've proposed could not happen until bombs started going off in the U.S. on a regular basis.
I think the ball is already rolling. 9/11, Columbine, Virginia Tech, and three shooting rampages within the last seven days. Do we really have to wait until hundreds die in a mall rampage? I don't feel Israel is a police state. I actually feel safer there than anywhere in the US, precisely because there is security present.
there simply isn't the political will in our country to make it happen.
Perhaps, but only because our politicians are too busy wasting time and money debating whether Roger Clemens used steroids. If they spent half the time on preventing attacks as they do on steroid abuse, we'd be a heck of a lot safer.
As their constituents, it's our job to realign their priorities... either by communicating with them (through petitions e.g.), or throwing the bums out.
First of all, it's questionable if this plan would even thwart an attack. (Terrorists could just go to Central Park, or the parking lot of the mall, or wait outside a stadium and blow people up leaving a game).
It works in Israel.
> Feeling safer in Israel
I think this is different for everyone. Personally, when I've been in Israel there always seemed to be palpable sense of tension in the air. But, its been a number of years since I've been back. Maybe it's different now.
> It works in Israel.
Like you mentioned in your post. Israel is not the US. Terrorists don't fly planes into buildings in Israel. Terrorists tailor their attacks to the people they are attacking. We might get some ideas from Israel but I don't think we should cut and paste Israeli security policies for use here in America.
This particular situation in Illinois involved someone whom everyone who knew him well knew had gone off his psychotropic medication two weeks ago and was becoming increasingly erratic and unstable. The family and/or his doctors should have had him forcibly committed based on his behavior before he did harm. I believe that whoever was the prescriber did not fulfill his legal duty to protect his patient and the public. There's a doctor somewhere in this story who should have his pants sued off him by all the victims families. I'm a therapist. We in mental health have certain legal responsibilities. This is just shameful.
What if security guards just had magnetic wands, not guns, the way they do in Israel? They'd wave people down as they enter a building to make sure they're not armed.
Too many buildings and access points. Even if you limit access to a single point for each building (fire hazard?), that only shifts the geography of the problem. Now, when classes change, there will be lines to get in and out of buildings. Instead of the classroom being the target, the lines become the target because that is where people are concentrated.
And the funding isn't there for it. Higher education is hurting for money in the United States. I don't think it's a matter of political will (unless perhaps we divert the war funding to real homeland security). I think there's just not enough money to fund it. The university in question is operating on a shoestring as it is. Make attending school a hassle, and even less funding will walk through the doors.
Security in depth is a better answer instead of shifting around vulnerabilities.
CM,
"I believe Israeli security guards are not IDF officers."
Not my point per se. My point was that the training is ubiquitous.
All those guards are probably ex-soldiers.
I like Jonathan Blake's idea of training willing faculty and staff. The VT prof was able to save student lives, because as a Holocaust survivor he had an instinct of how to handle the situation. Unfortunately, it cost him his life.
Just FYI, I have updated the petition with some of the ideas mentioned here and elsewhere.
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