New York Jewish Week — A Jewish security watchdog is doubling down on safety measures in the wake of a Friday night attack against worshipers at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue, calling on police to identify cutting-edge tactics to identify hot spots for potential hate crimes and to place more officers in those areas.

But Mitchell Silber, CEO of the Community Security Initiative, acknowledged that preventing situations like Friday’s is not straightforward.

“It’s difficult, because you’re trying to balance being open for the public for worship, and at the same time, keeping our sanctuary safe,” Silber told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Sunday.

On Friday night Larry Montes, 46, was able to make his way into Central Synagogue’s main sanctuary before he disrupted the service with antisemitic slurs and was apprehended by a security guard. Silber said he’s been in contact with Central Synagogue security leadership about the incident and understood that Montes had not initially raised any red flags when he entered the building.

“There wasn’t something so out of place that it required them to pull him aside, but they noticed him as not someone they were familiar with,” he said. According to CSI, the synagogue’s team was able to quickly defuse the situation anyway due to the training it had received.

In the wake of the incident, Silber said the CSI is sending a bulletin to synagogues about steps to improve synagogue safety, a copy of which was shown to JTA.

The CSI has begun discussions with the NYPD about using tools like “datamining, crime cluster mapping and pre-emptively deploying against hot spots” in order to prevent hate crimes before they can happen. The CSI coordinates security for Jewish institutions and communities in the New York area, and is jointly funded by the UJA-Federation of New York and the Jewish Community Relations Council. (70 Faces Media, the parent company of the JTA and New York Jewish Week, receives UJA funding.)

The CSI bulletin is also encouraging other synagogues to partner with the Community Security Service, another Jewish nonprofit that trains congregants to volunteer as greeters who can provide more personalized discernment of........

© The Times of Israel