Consider these real life incidents and how your church or ministry would respond in a similar situation. Discuss these scenarios with your safety and security team.
1. Break-ins
Association members informed NACS that during church services, cars were being broken into and garage door openers were taken. The burglars then broke into homes while the owners of the vehicles were in church service. We were able to forward the information as a security alert to about 200 area churches so they could protect their congregations.
2. Parking lot cruisers
A church's security team reported that they observed a suspicious vehicle cruising their parking lot. The team contacted local law enforcement. The police made a vehicle stop and made two arrests for possession of meth and burglary tools. Police believed they were involved in car break-ins. This arrest led to a search warrant being issued for one of the arrestee's residences that, in turn, resulted in multiple arrests for a meth lab on the premise.
3. Suspicious calls
A local church contacted us about an individual who was making phone calls to their church that seemed a little odd. The caller's name was Mike, and he was asking questions as to where and when the youth met and if they were supervised, etc. He repeatedly called this church and asked the same questions. When we put this out to our members, we received almost a dozen phone calls from other area churches and ministries that had received similar calls. We contacted police, and the individual (who had an arrest record) was picked up by police and questioned. He was informed that our association tracks these events and that if he continued he would be arrested. Multiple churches filed restraining orders against him.
4. Suspicious actions
A local church informed us of an individual who was targeting very young children. He wore stuffed monkeys, snakes, etc. around his neck. During service, he took a toy from a four year old, put it in his pocket and asked the four year old to get it out of his pocket. We were sent a picture from a security member's cell phone and were able to give a detailed description of the man to other area churches so they could be aware of this person and activity.