General Recommendations
Recognizing and Dealing With:
•	Suspicious People
•	Unwarranted Interest in Your Facility
•	Recognizing and Dealing With Suspicious Objects
•	Suspicious Vehicles

Many terrorist organizations first engage in surveillance on their potential targets. Thus, we should all be paying attention to anyone attempting to photograph or study our facilities -- especially in the days and weeks leading up to the holidays.

Someone examining your facility (or looking closely at the people arriving at or leaving from your building) should be cause for concern. If you spot someone you believe may be doing surveillance on your facility:

1. Call the police immediately. It is crucial that the dispatcher/911 operator be given all available information, starting with the fact that the location is a Jewish institution, and its exact address/location. Other important items would include a description of the suspicious individual, their approximate height and weight, what clothing they have on, type of car and license plate number if one is observed, and any unusual characteristics that would make him or her easy to identify.

2. Consistent with your safety and personal comfort level, consider getting a photo of the person doing surveillance. If the institution has video cameras which are actively monitored make sure the operators know what to look for and to get film of the incident. Every institution should be encouraged to have a camera available to take photos of suspects. Inexpensive disposable cameras will suffice.

3. If the person leaves before police arrive, you may choose, consistent with your safety and personal comfort level, to approach the individual and inquire as to why he or she is taking photos of the location. The response may be "none of your business, I can take pictures of whatever I want." This is true (unless the surveyor is trespassing) but will have the benefit of placing the surveillor "on notice" that his or her actions were observed. Get a picture of the subject/car as he or she leaves.

4. Even if the person leaves, police should be informed and given a report. If the responding Law Enforcement Officer refuses to take a report, call ADL. Also, here is where preexisting relationships with police help: contact the person you already know. If a dispatcher does not consider this an emergency, inform him or her that you feel threatened and require assistance immediately.

5. Your safety is of paramount importance. Remember: call the police first and act to take pictures, get license information, etc only if you are confident that it is safe to do so.

Why worry about this? This is in line with the "target hardening" concept whereby you make your facility a more difficult and less attractive target, so that a potential assailant will not select it as a target.

Have a happy, healthy and safe holiday. . . and think security!