Advice on Church Security Teams

[JJ1]

First things first! Gabe you have put together the finest meeting place that I have found on the net for Christians that are involved in providing for their security by CCW or working as a LEO, Military or Private Security. Thank you!

History – I have spent 8 years as a LEO working patrol, detectives and later drug enforcement. Currently I am working in the private sector in marketing for an automation company. Additionally, I am the Chief of Security at a Church in the Dayton, Ohio area, which is the reason for my post.

We have had a Safety Team (EMT’s, nurses, etc.) and a Security Team in place for about 2 years and have put a number of procedures in place. Knowing that this must always be a learning environment, I would like to know what measures have been put in place at your place of worship. Some of the items we have put in place include written procedure manuals, radio networks for security, safety, children’s and facilities ministries, and logging children into and out of the children’s restricted area. We are working on other items such as lockdown for a gunman in the building, CCTV system, and tornado safety zones (SW Ohio has regular alerts in the tornado season). It may sound like a lot of details to consider but we typically have over 2000 members and visitors on any given Sunday. Your thoughts and recommendations would be greatly appreciated on items such as team training or other areas that I did not mention above

Sorry for the length of this post, but additional views is always welcome when it comes to protecting your charges.

Be Safe

In Christ
Jack

[Gabe Suarez]

Jack,

Thanks for the compliments. The glory is truly His.

Anyway, I'm not the MIC (man in charge) at our church, but I can put you in touch with him. Send me a PM with your contact info and I'll hand it to Pastor Dale Tuesday night.

Anything we can do to help you and your church will be done.

I am also interested in this type of information. We have an almost identical situation here in Portland Oregon.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Tim

[Pale Horse]

We have a body of about 2000 believers and about 15 or 20 safety and security members. Our team leader has taken great steps in prepairing the staff but not the body for the following;
Fire, Disruptive behavior, bombs, theft, vandalism, cpr, first aid, electoric defibrulatior, extensive medical supplies, gloucose meter, secure radios w/ ear plugs, free lunch "meetings" every month, evacuation plans, doctors, RNs, police, former military, and your adverage Joe and much more that I cant think of.

He has done very well, but like I said he has not prepaired to body for our response to any of those things. Most of them dont even know we have the team in place for their childrens protection. So if you do start one up please make sure that before something happens that the body knows that there are people who are trained to help or take care of almost any situation. Otherwise you are going to have a panic bunch of parents that want to get their kids out of the building and stampeed anyone who gets in the way.

Be discreet, but still have a presence.

[Gabe Suarez]

You know, I spoke with Dale Fricke (the pastor in charge of our program) and he has been getting a number of inquiries as well. Could it be the Holy Spirit is giving some of us a wake up call?

I will give this some thought in the next few weeks as well as prayer. Perhaps we need to establish a retreat of sorts that would not only provide spiritual training but physical skills as well.

[JJ1]

Gabe

I think that this would go over very well. I had a great conversation with Mark Swain today and discussed some of the procedures that we have put into place and decided that we might not be as far behind the curve as I originally thought. One thing that becomes apparent is the size of the church facilities and membership does raise concern. Larger groups seem to draw more of the “crazies” than a smaller site. If the facility is close to freeway access, it could be an easy target for vandalism or theft. Armed robbery of the offering is a possibility as well as pilfering of the offering. When you consider the implementation of a Safety/Security Team you need to do an honest risk evaluation and determine the mission of the team. Our church deals with a population of over 2000 every Sunday. We elected to put two teams into place.

Safety Team and Security Team

The Safety Team is comprised of EMT’s, Nurses, Doctors and Fireman. Their main focus is to treat any injuries, illnesses or other medical conditions. The Team Leader is empowered to call the local EMT Squad as he deems necessary. If he is not available the senior Safety Team member will make that assessment. In the past year this team has handled 7 confirmed or possible heart attacks, once case of early labor, a children’s seizure and many miscellaneous bumps, bruises cuts, etc. We have 2 members on duty at every service and a minimum of one at special events such as concerts and seminars.

The Security Team is comprised of Current and former LEO’s, Corporate Security Management, Current and former Military personnel and interested members. All members are interviewed upon application with the idea of weeding out those who desire to be a “High Profile Power Figure”. We run a low profile, helpful, servant based group. Additionally, we run a criminal background check for our state or the most recent state the applicant was residing in. The duties consist of patrolling the facility inside and outside, assisting visitors with directions or questions, securing the preschool and nursery areas, lost parent/children issues, requesting and co-ordination of medical requests, clearing the parking lot and doors for approaching EMT Units, escorting the offering from pickup to deposit into the safe (yes, a church can have need of a safe), special escorts and to coordinate building evacuation.. Such as the day the Senior Pastor used several thousand dollars as props. were very happy that all went well, but insisted that knowledge of the prop be restricted before the services.

The items that I believe you should consider for a retreat or a permanent class is as follows:

1 Evaluation of the Churches risks
2 Developing a written plan to present to the Pastors and Board and getting their support
3 Funding the team (It can require some investment)
4 Establishing a Team Policy Handbook – Procedures and Responses
5 Selection Security Team Members (STM) – What to look for and what to watch our for.
6 Training of Team Members – Policy/Procedures – FOF – CCW – Etc.
7 Selection of Equipment – Radios, Flashlights, Team Identification ( Shirts, Name Plates, Etc), ASP, OC, Etc.
8 Establishing incident reports, report logs, etc.
9 Announcing the team to the members without causing panic – (Why does the Church need a ST?)
10 Building relationships with the local PD and FD
11 Maintaining the ST without burning out the members – (Staff so you don’t work every weekend)
12 In service training to maintain an edge
13 Understanding that you are NOT Police Officers
14 The time frame for initial and total implementation of the Team
15 Creating the Bond of Christian Men in the team


I am sure that others will have additional topics that can be discussed. Many will fall within Policies and Responses such as evacuations, fire, bomb, lock downs, unruly visitors, stalking, etc.

After all this the answer is YES, we need to discuss, evolve and implement how to protect our charges and I would love to attend a retreat or program. Gabe, I can offer a copy of our STM manual – basic as it is - as a starting point for use in building a program. Use what you like and discard the rest. If all of our Christian brothers add to the pot, we can create a great set of guidelines to assist other churches.

Sorry for the length once again, but this is a passion.

In Christ Name
Jack

[Mark Swain]

JJ1,

I enjoyed speaking with you as well.

In looking over your last post I thought of one thing that might help "sell" the idea of a Team to the powers that be, would be to call the overall Team a Safety Team and then subdivide it into a Medical Team and a Security Team.

If you put the word "Security" up front that can cause some people to question the need ("What do we need Security for? We've gone all this time and haven't needed it."etc.) but who can be against "Safety"?

My $0.02

[JJ1]

Mark

You are correct. The official name displayed is Safety Team. We wear Polo shirts with the church emblem on the left shoulder area and the words “Safety Team” underneath. In our case the Medical Teams wear maroon colored shirts and the Security Team wears gray. Staff members, ushers, teachers and helpers know the difference but to the congregation it is less pronounced. The decision about how to identify the security staff took a while as we did not wish to appear that we required “heavy” security elements to keep people safe. We portray a gentle caring image to all we come into contact with and believed calling both elements “Safety” was the correct decision in our case. Our team is based on servant leadership and this seems to enhance our ability to work with the public.

In Christ

Jack

[michael]

I am also in a church that regularly has 2000 members on Sunday, and approximately 350-400 teenagers on Wednesday night. It is great to read what you guys are doing at your churches, but it makes me realize how behind the curve my church is. We call our security team "Campus Shephards" and are very low-key. There is no training at all, but we do utlilze radio's with earpieces and there are many surveillance cameras, but they are not manned. I am and we have a couple of LEO's and a few security people on our staff, but for the most part the team is untrained, which I find really scary. Unfortunately, I have no control over what they do or how they train. Those decisions are made by the staff. One good thing is that they have recently placed the team under control of a minister who is a former highway patrolman, so maybe things will change. We've had a rash of thefts in recent weeks and I think they are beginning to see the need. The tour bus for Greater Vision was broken into in the parking lot while they performed, and we regularly have controversial personalities like Dr. Jerry Falwell and others. I appreciate everyone's input on this, and I think a retreat would be a great idea.

[JJ1]

Lets pose some additional questions.

1 In Churches that have fielded a Safety/Security Team, do you have any personnel that are armed? If so, concealed or open? What did you need to do to to reach agreement with the pastoral staff to permit this?

2 Has your church or another that you know (not rumors but confirmed) had a problem with armed robbery, B&E, or armed intruders on the facility?

3 Has it resulted in a shooting incident?

JJ1