But he knew he was in the bathroom and he was able to get out of the building, again, because these exit doors were working well. I cant tell you how thankful i am just to do that one task Homeland Security told us to do. Because in the past you couldnt push through the exit doors . They werent easily opened. They had safeties on them so they couldnt open either way. But now he was able to get out. I mean, he could be alive because of this. Where were you when you found out this had occurred . I was heading up to the service. Im there every i was there last night for service. I go up there around 10 00 and in the morning and one of the Vice President s that i work with on facilities now that i stepped down, he called. He worked for city emergency management. And he said he just got word theres an active shooter at
tree of life. Go up there and see if this is true. I tried to get up. I only live a block away from the synagogue. I tried to get up shady avenue and was police cars everywhe
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.