Two leading Jewish organizations Wednesday announced a security alliance in an effort to help law enforcement prevent and combat an increase in antisemitic incidents in Southern California.
The Southern California Jewish Security Alliance — combining the resources of the Anti-Defamation League of Los Angeles and the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles — will act as the central point of contact for law enforcement and elected officials on issues affecting Jewish security, according to the group.
Recent threats to the Southern California Jewish community include a spate of “swatting” incidents this month targeting synagogues, including Congregation Beth Israel in San Diego, the Pico-Robertson shootings in February, and antisemitic flyers distributed in many neighborhoods.
“When you combine resources, you can connect the dots between what might appear to be unrelated incidents of antisemitism and paint a clearer picture of the challenges we face as a community,” Jeffrey I. Abrams, regional director of ADL Los Angeles, said in a statement.
“This partnership involves leveraging each other’s comparative advantages, joint mobilization of resources and leveraging those resources, including ADL’s decades-long Law Enforcement Advisory Committee which has built critical and lasting relations with local, state and federal law enforcement officials throughout Southern California.”
The Community Security Service, a leading Jewish volunteer security organization, has signed on as the first partner organization, according to the alliance.
As part of its efforts, the new partnership will meet regularly to discuss and brief each other on coordination and action items; review and improve community activation plans/disaster response plans; develop protocols for, among other items, issuing emergency community alerts and rapid response to emergencies; and exchange information to create best practices regarding training, physical security assessments, and intelligence gathering and analysis, according to the group.
The alliance plans to hire an intelligence analyst to work with both ADL’s Center on Extremism and the Jewish Federation’s Community Security Initiative. The expert will focus on detecting, tracking and analyzing physical threats, hate incidents and extremist trends as well as collecting and analyzing data to help shape prevention efforts.
“We see the alliance as a continuation of bringing together our resources because we know that working together in lockstep is the best way to combat antisemitism and hate,” Rabbi Noah Farkas, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, said in a statement.
“The threats are real, and they are in our own backyard … we hope the Alliance will serve as an example of what true partnership means because when it comes to security, working in silos is not an option.”
City News Servic contributed to this article.