Faith-Based Daily Awareness Post 17 October 2023

These updates are shared to help raise the situational awareness of Faith-Based organizations to best defend against and mitigate the impacts from all-hazards threats including physical security, cybersecurity, and natural disasters. 

Weekly Security Sprint EP 38. Protests, hostile events, security vulnerabilities and reports and more.

The Gate 15 Security Sprint is a weekly rundown of the week’s notable all-hazards security news, risks and threats and some of the key focus areas for organizations to consider behind the headlines. Gate 15 team members discuss physical security, cybersecurity, natural hazards, health threats and other issues across our environment.

In this week’s Security Sprint, Dave and Andy discuss:

• War in Israel
  • Director Wray Addresses International Association of Chiefs of Police Conference
  • FBI director warns of rise in terror threats against Americans, potential copy-cat attacks on US soil
• Faith Based Updates: 
  • FB-ISAO Newsletter, v5, Issue 10
  • The White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships releases Allied Against Hate: A Toolkit for Faith Communities – Tools and Resources to Protect Places of Worship
  • DHS: Resources and Information for Faith and Community Leaders Regarding the Situation in Israel
• Active Shooter, Hostile Events and Fall Mass Gatherings

The above Gate 15 Weekly Security Sprint website also provides links to many security-related items of interest.

Calls for violence against Jews rose by 1,200% with NYC emerging as epicenter of threats: report

“A shocking new report suggests the number of antisemitic posts online increased 1,200% since Hamas began its terror attack in Israel on October 7 — with New York City emerging as an epicenter for this hate.”

In a related story, USA Today reports that Online hate surges after Hamas attacks Israel. Why everyone is blaming social media.

Analyst Comments:

Faith-Based Organizations (FBO) should consider social media when evaluating the threat environment. This is especially true if a FBO or its facilities are singled out in a specific threat.

FBI Releases 2022 Crime in the Nation Statistics

The FBI released detailed data on over 11 million criminal offenses reported to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, largely through the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and the Summary Reporting System (SRS). The FBI also accepted data from other agencies to provide nationally representative data.

The FBI’s crime statistics estimates for 2022 show that national violent crime decreased an estimated 1.7% in 2022 compared to 2021 estimates. Robbery showed an estimated increase of 1.3% nationally.

Hate Crime Statistics, 2022 provides information about the offenses, victims, offenders, and locations of hate crimes. In 2022, law enforcement agency participation significantly increased, resulting in 14,631 law enforcement agencies, with a population coverage of 91.7% submitting incident reports. These reports involved 11,634 criminal incidents and 13,337 related offenses as being motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity. There were over 11,000 single-bias hate crime incidents involving 13,278 victims and 346 multiple-bias hate crime incidents that involved 433 victims. In 2022, the top three bias categories in single-bias incidents were race/ethnicity/ancestry, religion, and sexual-orientation. The top bias types within those bias categories by volume of reported hate crime incidents is Anti-Black or African American for race/ethnicity/ancestry bias, Anti-Jewish for religious bias, and Anti-Gay (male) for sexual-orientation bias.

The complete analysis is located on the UCR’s Crime Data Explorer.

The following items are related to the FBI’s report.

• ADL: FBI Data Reflects Deeply Alarming Record-High Number of Reported Hate Crime Incidents in the U.S. in 2022
• FBI report: Violent crime decreases to pre-pandemic levels, but property crime is on the rise
• Violent crime down, carjackings up, according to FBI crime statistics
• FBI: Violent Crime Down To Pre-Pandemic Levels, But Property Crimes Rising

Info Sharing:

• FB-ISAO members are sharing additional information on this event as well as information about domestic protests and security coordination activities in FB-ISAO Slack. Join here.
• FB-ISAO members, other ISACs, and security partners from trusted communities are collaborating in the National Council of ISACs’ Slack Workspace. ISAC and ISAO members are welcome to join via their respective organizations.