Well, this was a situation that went on for more than ten hours, the stand off at a synagogue to the north west of dallas, and it ended with in explosions, gunfire could be heard coming from the synagogue, and it was shortly after that that it was announced that the four hostages a total of four hostages, one had been released earlier, but in total four were released, and that they were all safe and well. the suspect has been killed, or is dead, we don t know the circumstances surrounding the death of the suspect yet. we are hearing confirmation from the british government that a man in texas who is british has died it is assumed that the man in question is the person that took these people hostage, and it was an unusual situation. this was a traditional saturday morning service at the synagogue that was being live streamed, live streamed in large part because of covid, many people in the congregation not wanting to go in person, which is clearly something
Welcome. how will investigators approach that, knowing there s so many ways of entry and exit? many religions have open door policies which means they welcome people to worship, particularly during the saturday morning service. i think local law enforcement and various communities around the country work with the fbi and work together to try to ascertain specific threats against specific synagogues. as i mentioned earlier, the percentage of anti-semitic attacks have gone up significantly. in 2017, we had 12 anti-semitic attacks in the state of new york alone. every synagogue has a security team regularly assessing what that threat environment looks like. interacting with local law enforcement in their community to ascertain what the threat level looks like who, i would imagine, james, are in touch with the fbi to track hate crime threat reporting.
Will have law enforcement that respondsing and providing a level of comfort and security to those that are participating in services. shawn, thank for being here in the studio with me. joining us now, joe ruben, a member of the tree of life synagogues. this must be very, very difficult for you to witness as it was for howard feynman who we heard from earlier who grew up in that synagogue. yes. three synagogues actually share that space right now. this morning, there was a baby naming. i have had my three daughters named there in a similar saturday morning service of baby naming. the shooter said all jews must