NEW YORK — The black SUV squeezed past a double-parked sedan on a Manhattan street, then rolled slowly past a synagogue, its occupants peering out of the partially open windows.

“There’s a guy sitting right in front of the shul. Is he known to security?” the passenger behind the driver aked, noticing a man sitting on a chair near the synagogue’s entrance.

“I’ll reach out,” the driver said.

The team was part of a new street patrol program from the Community Security Service (CSS), a Jewish nonprofit that trains volunteers to protect synagogues and Jewish events. CSS quietly launched the patrols several months ago, part of an expanding array of measures to protect Jewish communities as antisemitism and threats spike in New York City and around the US.

CSS granted The Times of Israel exclusive access to the patrol program, on the condition that the participants’ identities, specific locations, and some operational procedures remain confidential due to security risks.

The patrols, known as Mobile Protection Units (MPUs), began in January and operate in parts of Manhattan and the Bronx with high concentrations of Jewish residents. CSS plans to expand the program to other cities.

During patrols, CSS vehicles roam the city streets, looking for anything suspicious or out of place that could constitute a threat. Until recently, CSS stationed guards at synagogues and Jewish events, but had not formally operated moving patrols.

The UJA-Federation of New York helped fund the program, which was developed in partnership with the Community Security Initiative, a group that coordinates with law enforcement, tracks threats, and provides security assessments to Jewish institutions in the New York region.

The purpose of the patrols is to “detect, report, deploy and reassure,” said Richard Priem, the head of CSS.

Detecting means providing an extra layer of security by opening a wider perimeter for static guards at events. The patrols can spot approaching threats and report them to law enforcement. CSS reporting of threats has led to arrests in the past, averting potential attacks. For deployment, the patrol members can join guards who are already stationed at Jewish institutions and events if needed.

A central concern is vehicular ramming attacks, and the large SUVs can be parked in strategic locations as an obstacle.

In last month’s attack against a Michigan synagogue, an armed, Hezbollah-inspired attacker sat in the building’s parking lot for hours before smashing his Ford F150 through the doors and into the hallway of an early childhood education area, striking a guard. That incident and other attacks provide lessons to guards elsewhere.

The patrols’ underlying goal is to reassure Jewish community members “that we are proactively looking out for their safety,” Priem said. “Our goal is to be a subtle additional layer of security for the Jewish community in New York.”

“Every single volunteer who’s worked one event can tell you that they have people coming up to them, like, ‘Thank you for being here,’” the driver said. “Or, ‘We heard CSS was going to be here, and that made us feel like it was safe to join,’ so it boosts us.”

To accomplish those goals, the patrols will sometimes be covert and other times make their presence known by attaching labels to the vehicles.

“We’re not there to provoke. We choose when we make it known that we’re there and that will be for tactical reasons,” Priem said.

The patrol unit has several vehicles and conducts patrols in the mornings and evenings. The volunteers on the patrols are drawn from CSS’s ROAM program, which secures events and is made up of young Jewish professionals who are not affiliated with a synagogue. All volunteers who have graduated ROAM’s nine-week training regimen are eligible for the patrols, and the training program has added a component specifically for the patrol program. Trainers include NYPD and IDF veterans.

Meetup at McDonald’s in Manhattan

During the recent patrol in Manhattan, the team comprised a CSS staffer who was driving and two volunteers — a volunteer leader who works as a health administrator riding shotgun, and in the backseat, a recent college graduate from Long Island who is employed as a security guard for a private firm during the day.

The participants got into the vehicle outside a McDonald’s on a Manhattan avenue. They checked their handheld radios, making sure they were on the same channel in case they needed to communicate after exiting the vehicle. A black backpack with more radios was stashed behind the console and a trauma kit was in the trunk.

The patrols are manned by at least three participants — a driver, a guard riding shotgun to observe the other side of the street, and another behind the driver for an extra set of eyes. The windows are cracked so participants can hear what’s happening outside, but partially closed so an assailant can’t reach inside or throw anything into the vehicle. The routes are anchored by checks on synagogues and Jewish sites, but the team improvises its circuit.

“We want to avoid taking the same route over and over, and we want to imagine that we’ve got people watching us and trying to clock us and trying to figure out where we’re going to be next and time our routine,” the driver said.

“The way we’d like to keep it is uninteresting and have everything end quietly. Everybody goes home,” he said.

CSS is part of an interlocking network of Jewish security groups in the US. The national Secure Community Network and the Community Security Initiative in the New York region monitor threats and do intelligence analysis. The Anti-Defamation League does research and advocacy, and groups such as Guardian Self Defense teach Krav Maga. The organizations collaborate with each other and with law enforcement. CSS volunteers train in Krav Maga with Guardian Self Defense, and the group receives threat alerts from other partners, for example.

The Jewish Federations of North America estimates that Jewish institutions spend $765 million annually on security, and that a typical Jewish institution spends about 14% of its budget on security.

CSS was established as a non-profit by several congregants at a New York City synagogue in 2007. The group is modeled on volunteer guard programs for Jewish communities in Europe, where security issues became a concern earlier than was the case in the US. Priem got his start as a volunteer guard when he was a teenager growing up in Amsterdam in the early 2000s.

Lessons learned from ‘Tree of Life’ shooting

Security efforts for US Jews gained steam after the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018. More deadly attacks on Jews followed, in Poway, California; Jersey City, New Jersey; and Monsey, New York. The October 2023 Hamas assault on Israel and ensuing wave of antisemitism was another shock to US Jews, and more deadly attacks came last year, in Washington, DC, and Boulder, Colorado. Law enforcement has thwarted additional terror attack attempts on New York City Jews. Jews are targeted in hate crimes in New York City far more than any other group.

CSS expanded as those fears grew, and now counts around 6,500 active volunteer guards who work at around 500 organizations, Priem said.

As membership grew, the group expanded its programs. In the last major development, CSS opened a training facility outside New York City last year, the first in the US dedicated to training synagogue guards.

Hasidic communities in New York City and elsewhere have long had their own neighborhood safety patrols, known as Shomrim or Shmira.

CSS’s program differs in that it is focused on monitoring security threats to the Jewish community, while Shomrim is concerned with general public safety, responding to incidents such as shoplifting and lost persons. Shomrim volunteers often exit their vehicles during street incidents, but CSS only allows patrollers to alight in a life-threatening incident or for self-defense. In the three months since the patrols started, no CSS patroller has yet left their vehicle to respond to a security incident. Shomrim vehicles are clearly labeled and the group publicizes its phone numbers for the public, while the CSS patrols do not.

“It’s not a public safety street patrol. It’s not community policing,” Priem said. “In certain extreme scenarios, deployment could happen on the streets, but that is not the primary purpose.”

“It is de-escalation, it’s prevention. The goal is not to cause provocations, the goal is to prevent harm being done and there are very strict procedures and training and for getting out of the car,” he said.

The two programs also operate in different environments. Shomrim are based in neighborhoods that are overwhelmingly Orthodox or Hasidic, while the CSS patrols are in mixed neighborhoods where Jewish residents are more dispersed and less easily identifiable.

On the recent patrol, CSS members said they had been inspired to join by antisemitism and their personal experiences.

The driver signed up shortly after October 7 in response to the Hamas attack, the health administrator joined in 2021 during that year’s Gaza war and an explosion in anti-Israel protests, and the security guard started after he was “swarmed” and harassed by anti-Israel activists near a Jewish event hosted by a student group in 2024.

“For me, this was just like a really deeply fulfilling way to give back,” the driver said.

“People come from all different backgrounds, all different professions, all different walks of life, and everybody is here because they have the same mission, which is to let us still live Jewishly in the city that we love and not have to think twice about it,” added the health administrator, a Modern Orthodox woman from Queens.

The participants also bond with like-minded members of the Jewish community; at least one couple who met during CSS activities has gotten married.

There was a spike in volunteers after October 7, then a lull, and another jump in recent months, the driver said, amid New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani taking office, two caustic protests outside New York City synagogues, and threats related to the war in Iran. There have been repeated attacks on Jewish sites in Europe and the US since the war started in late February.

The patrol rolled by several synagogues on the Upper West Side, a street with a row of kosher restaurants, then headed past several kosher grocery stores as neighborhood residents who were leaving work picked up supplies for the upcoming Passover holiday. The driver noted a woman taking photos across the street from a synagogue, but determined that she was not focused on the building and continued on.

The team pointed out which restaurants had been targeted with graffiti in the past and the driver noted when they crossed the borders of police precincts. CSS and other Jewish security groups coordinate closely with local law enforcement.

They chatted about their Passover plans, offerings at the kosher restaurants they drove past, security teams at the different synagogues and past events they had provided security for. The driver said his most meaningful shift was when he located a woman with dementia at an outdoor Jewish festival to reunite her with her husband.

They crossed Central Park to the Upper East Side to drive by an anti-Israel protest near a synagogue, where demonstrators beat a drum and chanted. Seeing that the small rally was confined within police barricades and that there was a heavy police presence, the health administrator snapped a few photos for record-keeping and training purposes, then they continued to check several other Jewish sites.

The team crossed back to the Upper West Side to wrap up the patrol after several hours, grateful for another quiet evening.

“Nothing. That’s the way we like it,” the driver said.

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