Reposted from The New York Times

The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin knew it had a painting on its hands that required sensitivity: a 30-foot-wide panorama by the Houston-based artist Vincent Valdez that imagined a modern-day Ku Klux Klan gathering. And a string of recent art-world controversies had emphasized the need for such curatorial caution.

A painting of Emmett Till’s mutilated body by a white artist drew protests at last year’s Whitney Biennial, and images of black people smeared with chocolate and toothpaste by another white artist angered African-Americans in St. Louis. Last September, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis dismantled a gallows-like sculpture after Native American leaders said it evoked a mass hanging of Dakota Indians in 1862.

So after acquiring Mr. Valdez’s four-panel painting in 2016, the Blanton spent two years preparing for the work’s public debut on July 17. To display the painting, the curators had a special gallery built with a sign warning that the work “may elicit strong emotions.” Such warnings are relatively rare. The National Coalition Against Censorship’s “Museum Best Practices for Managing Controversy,” endorsed by several of the country’s leading museum advocacy organizations, suggests that “written warnings or disclaimers should be informational and not prejudicial.”

The museum even changed its security guards’ uniforms from a somber gray to a more cheerful blue, a planned update that was expedited because of the show.

The museum’s staff also gave previews of the painting to faculty, administrators and students, hoping this outreach would inoculate the museum against community criticism. Staff members consulted with more than 100 individuals and organizations, including the mayor’s office, the Anti-Defamation League and the Austin Justice Coalition, an advocacy organization for people of color.

But even the best-laid plans can go awry. One organization the museum did not consult until very late in the process was the Austin chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The N.A.A.C.P., since its founding in 1909, led anti-lynching campaigns in the United States among its many civil rights crusades.

Carlotta Stankiewicz, the Blanton’s director of marketing and communications, said a “miscommunication among our staff” was the reason for not contacting the organization sooner.

Racial violence remains a raw subject in Texas. Earlier this month the state marked the 20th anniversary of the murder of James Byrd Jr. by white supremacists in the small East Texas town of Jasper. In December civil rights groups, including the Austin N.A.A.C.P., unveiled a plaque in East Austin memorializing three African-Americans who were lynched in the area in 1894.

During a conversation in his Houston studio, Mr. Valdez said he hoped his painting, titled “The City I,” would remind viewers that the Klan cannot be safely relegated to the past. “There are people in the United States of America who refuse to acknowledge that entities like the Klan exist,” he said. “And now we’re seeing the end result.”

One of the hooded figures in the painting is looking at his iPhone; a late-model Chevy pickup truck is parked in the background. Many of the Klansmen stare directly out at the viewer.

“It’s a lot easier to confront subjects like white supremacy or the Klan as evil villains,” Mr. Valdez said. “I’m more concerned about the notion that we all inhabit the same American landscape.”

Mr. Valdez grew up on San Antonio’s predominantly Mexican-American south side, where he began painting at a young age. From the beginning, he addressed social injustice in his art. A video taken by his father, a Vietnam War veteran, shows the 10-year-old boy painting a mural of bomber jets dropping napalm on black, silhouetted figures.

The Blanton’s director, Simone Wicha, first encountered Mr. Valdez’s work at a 2014 San Antonio exhibition of his series “The Strangest Fruit,” which depicts the life-size bodies of lynched Mexican-American men in contemporary dress. Mr. Valdez wanted to call attention to the thousands of Mexicans who scholars estimate were lynched in America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Blanton purchased two paintings from the series, which are currently on view at the museum. Ms. Wicha viewed an unfinished version of “The City I” in Mr. Valdez’s studio in 2016, before it was displayed at the David Shelton Gallery in Houston.

Convinced of the painting’s power, Ms. Wicha helped raise $200,000 in private funds to buy it. She originally planned to unveil the painting in summer 2017, but decided to push the opening back a year after the election of President Trump. She didn’t want to create the impression that the museum had purchased the painting as some kind of protest. “It would be as if we had acquired it for a political statement, or the artist had painted it for a political statement,” Ms. Wicha explained.

The extra year also gave the museum time to engage the community. “I just felt that with a painting like this, the subject matter it’s taking on, the world we’re in, we needed to be really thoughtful in how we prepared,” Ms. Wicha said. “Would we have done this in a different political climate? I don’t know. But I can tell you that in this political climate it was the right thing to do.”

To provide that historical context, the Blanton hired six gallery “hosts,” at least one of whom will be in the gallery at all times (in addition to the security guard) to answer questions about the painting. A video screen in the gallery will play an interview with Mr. Valdez on loop. The wall text introducing the painting was written by the curator Veronica Roberts, who estimated that she had revised its six paragraphs at least 400 times. The exhibition will be complemented by a series of talks and programs beginning Tuesday and continuing through October, as well as an in-depth website.

Among all these efforts, however, the Blanton did not contact Nelson Linder, the local N.A.A.C.P. chapter president, until July 9.

“Something like this, not to call the N.A.A.C.P. is fairly ridiculous,” Mr. Linder said. “Out of courtesy, they should have let us take a look at it.”

After being made aware by this reporter of Mr. Linder’s concerns last week, Ms. Wicha invited the civil rights leader to view the painting and take part in one of the programs that will accompany the exhibition. Although Mr. Linder said he appreciated the museum’s finally contacting him, he expressed reservations about the painting itself. “I would have shown the victims,” he said. “Not just pictures of the Klan, but the end result of their behavior, the black folks being lynched.”

Responding to Mr. Linder’s point, Mr. Valdez wrote that images of black victims of lynching are indeed “shameful and should never be forgotten.” For his painting, he said, he was “invoking the sinister yet very real existence of the Klan and white supremacy today, hiding in clear sight among us.”

He added: “All I wanted to do in my painting, the story I wanted to tell was: Look around you; they’re still here.”

Mr. Linder said he hoped the experience would encourage the Blanton to communicate better with Austin’s African-American community. “It was a lesson learned,” he said. “You need to look outside your walls and figure out what’s going on in the community when you do these type of exhibitions.”

Edmund T. Gordon, chairman of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas, was among those invited to view the painting. He expressed concern that some white supremacists might interpret the painting as a glorification of the Klan.

“There are some who will see it and take it as that,” he said. “That’s not how I see it, and that’s not how the Blanton is trying to have it be understood.”

He added: “That’s why there needs to be robust contextualization about why the Blanton is showing this thing, and what the artist is trying to get at.”

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Reposted from Security Management

​In late 2011, Ricardo Sanz Marcos received a disturbing phone call. As a consultant with the cultural properties firm PROARPA Security Asset Protection and Cultural Heritage, he was used to receiving security inquiries about cultural properties, but he dreaded this type of news the most. An ancient Roman villa known as the Villa of Santa Cruz, in the province of Burgos, Spain, had been robbed.

Thieves had carelessly removed tiles from a centuries-old mosaic, called "The Return of Bacchus of India," situated in the middle of the house. The 5th century floor mosaic, which depicted a Roman god, was one of the largest and best preserved in Europe and was rare for its size of 66 square meters.

"The mosaic was destroyed when they stole it," Sanz Marcos recalls. "It was a pity because it was a beautiful mosaic."

Normally, art thieves who rob archaeological sites are careful to preserve the works they steal, but Sanz Marcos notes that the economic crisis in Spain has left many thieves desperate to make off with precious artifacts.

Thankfully, the artwork was restored to match the original as closely as possible. "Now there is a replica of the mosaic at the site," he notes. "The art technicians are very talented."

After the incident, which occurred in December 2011, Sanz Marcos was called to evaluate security measures at the Roman villa and assess how they could be improved. He says that visit was when he "fell in love" with an ancient archaeological site in Spain, known as the site of Colonia Clunia Sulpicia, not far from the villa.

Just a few years later, Sanz Marcos and a fellow cultural properties expert would complete a comprehensive site and survey risk assessment for the ancient archaeological site, one of only a few such assessments ever conducted.  ​

Cultural Properties

For ASIS Cultural Properties Council member James Clark, CPP, bringing value to the international membership around cultural properties security was a challenge he wanted to solve. "We were trying to increase our own knowledge base and our own body of knowledge, because we really needed that," he says of the council. "Things are going on in Europe that haven't been going on in the United States—there's the whole business of terrorism at sites in Syria, and a few years ago in Iran."

Threats. Clark, managing partner of Clark Security Group, LLC, an independent security consultancy in Cleveland, Ohio, notes that terrorism has had a destructive effect on cultural properties worldwide. Many headlines have been dedicated to Syria, where the Islamic State has purposefully destroyed countless ruins and artifacts.

But warfare is not the only threat to these historic sites. People who simply pick up relics, not understanding or knowing their value, can be a major threat to site preservation, he says. Lack of preventative measures, such as onsite security and technology systems, puts cultural properties at risk as well.

"My experience in South America and Central America—in Mexico in particular—is that there are varying degrees of security," he says. "There are some really fabulous sites in Mexico where there is no security. There are sites all over Central America—even Machu Picchu in Peru—that have periodic security. It's a challenge in all these places."

So, when Clark met fellow council member Ricardo Sanz Marcos, they immediately connected over their joint desire to bring more recognition and security to international cultural properties.

"We hit it off pretty quickly, and we started talking about how we could bring benefit to what he's been practicing in Europe, and particularly in Spain," Clark says.

CRISP Grant. Sanz Marcos was passionate about creating a standard of protection for smaller cultural properties around the world that didn't draw the same level of attention as larger sites like the Mayan Ruins, or other locations designated as World Heritage Sites by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

"South of the Mexican border, down to South America, the south of Africa, the southwest of Asia—they are developing countries and they don't have the same level of industry or economy as developed nations, but they have cultural properties in the middle of the jungle or the middle of the desert," Sanz Marcos says. "That was the cornerstone of the Clunia report, to make a standard of protection for cultural properties in developing countries."

He and Clark worked with then council chair Robert Carotenuto, CPP, PCI, PSP, associate vice president of security at the New York Botanical Garden, to write a CRISP (Connecting Research in Security to Practice) grant proposal to the ASIS International Foundation. Carotenuto says that he hoped the grant would give the council a way to produce a document of critical significance for the field and international members.

Carotenuto credits former ASIS Foundation Board member Dr. Arthur Kingsbury, CPP, who had extensive experience in archaeological security, and Gary Miville, another former Cultural Properties Council chair, with helping them put together the grant.

After submitting the proposal, they were awarded the CRISP grant, and chose to do several site surveys and a security risk assessment at the place near and dear to Sanz Marcos's heart—Clunia.

"The grant was helpful because it gave us the ability to pick a topic, a subject, and a location that were nonthreatening," Clark says, referring to the lack of terroristic threat in Spain. "But there were some challenges because it was in a remote location, it's a huge property, and nobody was really taking care of it to a great degree." They began their research in November 2016, and published their findings in a CRISP report in January 2018.

Clark and Sanz Marcos conducted a four-day site survey, assessed the threats and risks to the property, and provided recommendations for increasing security at Clunia. They paid visits to nearby historic sites as well, and conducted meetings with stakeholders, including employees working on-site, cultural ministries, mayors of surrounding towns, and a security advisor in charge of the site's contract with Securitas.

Based on their findings, the authors provided detailed recommendations to the stakeholders, which they hoped would increase tourism, community involvement, and overall prosperity at Clunia.

Challenges

Clunia is situated on a plateau in the Province of Burgos in the Castilla y León region of North Central Spain, approximately 150 miles north of Madrid. The location is all but remote, nestled next to the town of Peñalba de Castro, which has a population of fewer than 85 people. Excavation of the site began in 1915, and archaeologists found over the following decades that the colony was once a significant Roman city of the Iberian Peninsula, known as Hispania.

Clunia, which dates to the first century BC, is believed by scholars to be "the most representative of all the archaeological ruins that have been found from the Roman period in the Northern Iberian Peninsula," according to the site survey. The site includes a forum with a basilica, a temple, Roman baths, an aqueduct, and one of the largest theaters on the peninsula. Pottery, mosaics, sculptures, Roman coins, glass, and pieces of jewelry have been discovered at the site, as well as Christian symbols that indicate one of the first Christian communities in Hispania may have lived in Clunia.

The inhabitants were skilled, Clark says, as evidenced by the colony's remains. "They had farms, they had grain, they grew grapes, they made wine, they had hot and cold running water, and they were phenomenal engineers," he notes. "They could do whatever they wanted because they had those skills."

Still, only about 15,000 visitors a year come to see Clunia. Limited financial resources were found to be a major factor contributing to the site's poor security, with most funds coming from public administration budgets.

Threats. Clunia's remote location, Clark explains, contributes to the property's security challenges. "The police response is an hour away," Clark notes, based on information he received from the Spanish Ministry of Culture. He adds that the threat of fire, as well as fire response, is another obstacle. The area is mostly dry grassland, making it prone to brushfires, and departments have limited resources to fight blazes in large remote areas.

"Those are the primary issues: fire, theft, and then just damage to the site," Clark notes. "When the grasslands are destroyed, the rains just wash away the soil which takes away the protection of the yet-to-be uncovered ruins."

While terrorism was not found to be a significant risk to Clunia, one of the biggest challenges was theft of material over time from the site. Security around the 6-kilometer (3.5 mile) perimeter and within the site was severely limited, leaving precious artifacts exposed to potential theft and the fragile ruins unguarded.

"The town right next to the site has homes and buildings adorned with all kinds of artifacts from Clunia, and anybody can go to the site and pick something up," Clark says. "Fortune seekers who bring their metal detectors in are able to find Roman coins and other objects that were obviously not excavated."

With limited security patrols, intruders were often able to dig large numbers of holes in search of artifacts. "On a single day in 2015, site personnel discovered more than 165 holes dug into the ground by unknown intruders who had sufficient time to render such destruction without discovery," they write in the report. "It is unknown what, if anything, was removed during these incidents."

While there was a lock on the gate that guarded the site entrance, several keys had been given out to members of the community, and to shepherds who needed to pass through with their flocks to graze.

Resources. Clark and Sanz Marcos found in their assessment that security personnel and technologies at Clunia were severely limited. During public hours, a staff member who sold tickets at the gate and a guide who explained the history of the site were the only people consistently on the property. Additionally, a contract guard worked between 11:00 p.m. and 6:15 a.m., but the guard had no patrol vehicle to make tours.

The visitor center and artifact building, plus specific high-value artifacts inside, had alarm systems, but no one was monitoring video in real time. And with slow law enforcement response times, even if an alarm was triggered, the bad actors would have time to get away. ​

Recommendations

Based on their assessment, Clark and Sanz Marcos made several recommendations to increase both security and community involvement at Clunia. Their final recommendation was a holistic security approach with three components. The approach aimed to get the community on board with a sense of ownership of Clunia, provide policies and practices that complement the security technology and officers in place, and provide those officers with tools and technology that allow them to deter or stop bad actors from accessing the site.

Intrusion detection. The authors recommended several security technologies, providing a detailed summary of costs for each specific purchase, such as re-keying the perimeter gates, adding thermal cameras, and purchasing an all-weather, all-terrain vehicle for the security guard.

Re-keying the gate would solve the issue of several missing keys that had been given out over the years. But the authors recommended that shepherds could continue grazing on the property, because it turned out the sheep helped prevent fire outbreaks by eating the dry brush.

Strategically placed cameras would notify security staff when someone penetrates the fence or trespasses on the site. "One of the technologies that we recommended were thermal imaging cameras mounted on poles, which can detect movement or motions up to a mile," Clark says. "We recommended four or five of those on the site."

Establishing a full-time security presence during all hours Clunia is closed to the public was suggested, which would include two officers: one to staff a control center within the visitor center, and another to perform patrols.

Clark adds that a new visitors center currently under construction could house a new video monitoring location and would serve as a further deterrent to people trying to desecrate the site. "This would allow people to park their vehicles, go through a pedestrian gate, go through the visitors center, pass a small museum there, then go up on the site," he says. "They wouldn't be able to bring metal detectors and shovels—and things of that nature—where they could desecrate the site."

Community awareness. Because the Spanish Cultural Ministry has limited financial resources, Clark and Sanz Marcos determined that increasing community buy-in around Clunia could generate more revenue for protecting it. By educating surrounding communities about the history and significance of the site, the authors indicated the value that Clunia could bring to restaurants, hotels, and other nearby merchants.

"This process should begin by first working with community leaders such as mayors, legislative representatives, and business people, followed by focused community meetings, informational brochures, and regular communications from the cultural ministry," they write in the report.

They suggested a training program to educate schools, neighborhood associations, and other institutions about Clunia, and recommended a marketing strategy in conjunction with nearby properties to draw tourism.

Sanz Marcos iterates the importance of community buy-in for the success of any historic site. "If you transform the cultural property into a sustainable industry that creates jobs, health, wealth, and a better life for the population around it, you can preserve the property," Sanz Marcos notes. "We have to leave our cultural properties for our children in better condition than we received them."

While Clunia was Clark's first archaeological site survey, he has performed risk assessments at museums, libraries, and other cultural properties throughout his career. He says he found that the basic principles of effective physical security applied to Clunia. "The biggest surprise to me was how relatively simple the solutions are," he says. "You really need to do vulnerability assessments on all these sites. There's a lot of common ground here. but there are also a lot of idiosyncrasies about each individual site."

Carotenuto echoes the importance of paying attention to the uniqueness of each cultural property and says it's a best practice for any risk assessment. "As security professionals, we don't just go in and tell someone, 'Well, this is what you need,'" he says. "It has to be tailored to that environment, it has to fit with the culture of that place, and that to me is the most interesting thing about the Clunia report—they realized they needed to embrace the culture of that site." 

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Reposted from EHS Today

On April 3, 2018, 38-year-old Nasim Najafi Aghdam entered YouTube’s headquarters with a semi-automatic pistol and began shooting company employees.
The act of workplace violence at the video sharing company’s San Bruno, Calif., office was only one of many incidents that have caused widespread media attention and discussions about what companies can do to protect their workers from active shooting situations.

“Given the current landscape of the workforce, a company’s ability to focus on an active shooter or workplace violence incident is absolutely paramount,” says Juliette Kayyem, CEO of Zemcar. “Moving forward, leading organizations need to ensure the safety of employees by bringing these policies into the workplace and putting them into practice, much like how fire drills are already a regular event for employees.”

While workplace violence statistics often are underreported, the numbers that are available only demonstrate that it is far more prevalent.
The most recent data available estimates that more than 2 million people are victims of a workplace violence incident each year. The FBI states that 80 percent of all active shooting incidents happen on the job. However, many employers still remain unprepared. EHS professionals and employers can create a secure workplace through training workers to recognize the signs of a disgruntled employee as well as having a solid emergency response plan in place should an act of violence occur.

Causes

The most common types of workplace violence vary by industry, but can be broken down into four parts (See “Types of Workplace Violence”). The FBI provides detailed information about the different occurrences on its website and published resources.

The U.S. workforce spends on average about one-third of their life in the workplace, according to numerous studies. So, knowing your coworkers and surroundings is crucial to preventing a workplace violence incident.

“Employees typically know when something is ‘off’,” says Vic Merjanian, founder and CEO of Titan HST. “Common warning signs in individuals are increased aggression, harassment towards customers or employees, concealment of a weapon and interpersonal conduct that doesn’t fit the setting.” It is also important to be wary of biases an individual may possess and to ensure that the perceived threat is based on objective criteria, he adds. Workplace safety is ever evolving, and communicating threats as well active situations is key to sending workers home safe every day.

Communication

A survey conducted by Rave Mobile Safety shows the need for effective communication in workplace violence incidents.
More than half of Millennial respondents (53%) said they were unaware of their company’s emergency plans or that their employer had no plan in place. Only 34% of respondents aged 45 and older indicated the same.

In addition, the survey discovered that only half of those 45 and older were “very likely” to report an issue when it comes to worker safety, and just 8% of Millennials surveyed said the same. Facilitating the right communications methods is an essential step.

“Initiating quick, direct and informative communication is essential,” Merjanian says. “Being able to share what the threat looks like, where the threat is located and any other pertinent details is always helpful to emergency responders.”

When it comes to technology, employers should ensure workers have proper cellular access and Wi-Fi connection to facilitate calls should an emergency occur. Emergency applications can be downloaded on smartphones to communicate more directly across the employee network, notify emergency responders and download lifesaving resources such as CPR and first aid instructions.

When it comes to protecting both the workplace and employees, installing security cameras in vulnerable building access points such as loading docks, shipping and receiving entrances, parking garages, or main entrances can deter criminal activity, says Amy Harper, senior director of workplace strategy and consulting operations at the National Safety Council (NSC). Harper adds that employers have recognized the need to address workplace violence and set up policies to address this through employee training, conducting mock training exercises, adopting a zero-tolerance policy toward workplace violence and creating an emergency action plan.

Making a Plan

Emergency response plans should be clear and direct with how workers should react or handle a situation. These plans should include proper procedures for assessing, documenting and acting on potential threats, Merjanian says.

“Unfortunately, we find that many workplaces do not have any plans in place, or have plans that are very outdated and do not address the threats that employees may encounter in today’s workplace,” he says.

When it comes to documentation, companies should have written protocols for terminations and demotions/job changes of workers that identify potential security and employee safety concerns in order to mitigate those, Harper says.

Security badges as well as badge-based permissions should be made available to ensure only approved workers are able to access the facility or any restricted areas.

“Contractor management programs help account for any non-employee presence onsite and having protocols for contractors to “check in” upon arrival ensures they are expected and have approval to provide services,” Harper says. When a threat or incident occurs, a structured response needs to take place in order to keep workers safe.

“Once a threat is identified, the question becomes — do we contain the threat, assuming we can, or do we advise employees and customers to initiate a lockdown?” Merjanian says. The first step workers should take is to immediately contact security or law enforcement. Then, employees can move coworkers, themselves, and any potential customers in to a safer place if they are able to, he says.

“It is generally not advisable to approach the threat,” Merjanian says. “If you do see a weapon and decide the only option is to approach the threat, the employee must make sure to commit to their actions and not hesitate.”

In an active situation, the best advice is to stay calm and exercise one of three options: run, hide or fight, Harper says (See “Run, Hide, Fight”).

“Some people commit violence because of revenge, robbery or ideology – with or without a component of mental illness,” Harper says. “There is no way of knowing when an attack is imminent. So it’s important to be vigilant and alert, and to have prepared ahead of time, being sure to train employees on appropriate responses.”

_____________________________

Types of Workplace Violence

TYPE 1: Violent acts by criminals who have no other connection with the workplace other than to enter to commit robbery or another crime.

Type 1 violence by criminals otherwise unconnected to the workplace accounts for the vast majority—nearly 80% —of workplace homicides. In these incidents, the motive is usually theft, and in a great many cases, the criminal is carrying a gun or other weapon, increasing the likelihood that the victim will be killed or seriously wounded. This type of violence falls heavily in industries where workers’ jobs make them vulnerable: taxi drivers such as late-night retail or gas station clerks, and others who are on duty at night, who work in isolation.

TYPE 2: Violence directed at employees by customers, clients, patients, students, inmates, or any others for whom an organization provides services.

Type 2 cases typically involve assaults on a worker by a customer, patient or someone else receiving a service. In general, the violent acts occur as workers are performing their normal tasks. In some occupations, dealing with dangerous people is inherent in the job, as in the case of a police officer, correctional officer, security guard, or mental health worker. For other occupations, violent reactions by a customer or client are unpredictable, triggered by an argument, anger at the quality of service or denial of service, delays, or some other precipitating event.

TYPE 3: Violence against coworkers, supervisors, or managers by a present or former worker.

TYPE 4: Violence committed in the workplace by someone who doesn’t work there, but has a personal relationship with an employee—an abusive spouse or domestic partner.

Type 3 and Type 4 violence comprise of incidents involving violence by past or present employees and acts committed by domestic abusers or arising from other personal relationships that follow a worker into their place of employment. Violence in these categories is no less or more dangerous or damaging than any other violent act. When the violence comes from a worker or someone close to that worker, there is a much greater chance that some warning sign will have reached the employer in the form of observable behavior.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation

_____________________________

Run, Hide, Fight

RUN—If there is an accessible escape path, attempt to evacuate the premises. Be sure to:
• Have an escape route and plan in mind
• Evacuate regardless of whether others agree to follow
• Leave your belongings behind
• Help others escape, if possible
• Prevent individuals from entering an area where the active shooter may be
• Keep your hands visible
• Follow the instructions of any police officers
• Do not attempt to move wounded people
• Call 911 when you are safe

HIDE—If evacuation is not possible, find a place to hide where the active shooter is less likely to find you. Your hiding place should:
• Be out of the active shooter’s view
• Provide protection if shots are fired in your direction (i.e., an office with a closed and locked door)
• Not trap you or restrict your options for movement

To prevent an active shooter from entering your hiding place:
• Lock the door
• Blockade the door with heavy furniture is nearby:
• Silence your cell phone and/or pager
• Turn off any source of noise (i.e., radios, televisions)
• Hide behind large items (i.e., cabinets, desks)
• Remain quiet

If evacuation and hiding out are not possible:
• Remain calm
• Dial 911, if possible, to alert police to the active shooter’s location
• If you cannot speak, leave the line open and allow the dispatcher to listen

FIGHT—As a last resort, and only when your life is in imminent danger, attempt to disrupt and/or incapacitate the active shooter by:
• Acting as aggressively as possible against him/her
• Throwing items and improvising weapons
• Yelling
• Committing to your actions

Source: National Safety Council

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Reposted from Washington's Top News

Plans to increase security at Smithsonian’s National Zoo are on hold for now.

The National Capital Planning Commission voted Thursday to defer action on proposed plans until it gets more information.

“There’s this big mystery about ‘what is the threat?'” Commissioner Mina Wright said. “We don’t have an explanation for what the threat is.”

The zoo’s security changes were to be considered in phases. The first phase plans to secure the perimeter with vehicle-resistant fencing and reduce the number of entry points from 13 to three.

The intention for the second phase is to construct security pavilions for visitor screening.

“Seeing that there will be screening facilities and gates coming, from a holistic perspective, why not look at how the whole system works together,” Commissioner Beth White said.

The vote on phase one plans were deferred until the Smithsonian gives the commission a security assessment for the zoo and conducts comprehensive community outreach.

“There seems to me to be a variety of legitimate concerns,” Wright said, noting that she has read all the community comments submitted to the commission on the subject.

Wright told Albert G. Horvath, Smithsonian chief operating officer and undersecretary for finance and administration, that the community disagrees with his assessment that reducing entry points and adding fencing would have little impact on visitor experience or on the zoo’s parklike setting.

Horvath said there’s no desire to change “the feel” of the National Zoo — it’s one of the gems of the city.

“I would urge you also to consider the challenge that our zoo police officers have,” Horvath said. “And, [consider] our desire to create a situation for them where they can be more effective and more successful in what they do.”

Commissioner Evan Cash wondered whether consolidating entry points is less about security and more about defining access as a means to perhaps start charging admission at some time in the future.

“It can be a slippery slope, I think, under the guise of security,” Cash said. “That could be an easy next step, because now we could just take your tickets and you can buy them at these, eventually four, entrances.”

The $1.5 million to pay for new fencing is already in the Smithsonian’s 2019 budget. Horvath said concept studies for potential screening pavilions estimate they might cost about $2.5 million.

The commission’s next meeting is Sept. 6.

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Reposted from The Guardian

A collection of unpublished letters written by WB Yeats that was stolen in the 1970s and returned “anonymously” has been identified at Princeton University.

John Kelly, who has spent decades tracking down thousands of Yeats’s letters, discovered the collection as he was concluding research for the latest volume of his work on the Irish poet and dramatist.

Kelly was browsing the catalogue of Princeton University Library, where he had pored over Yeats’s holdings some years earlier, when he spotted a file of 17 letters to the poet’s publisher he had not seen before.

He discovered from the librarian it had been stolen in the 1970s, disappearing without trace until it turned up recently, delivered anonymously in a brown package.

Libraries often list donors of books or manuscripts. The Princeton file said: “A gift of anonymous, return of a 1970s theft.”

Kelly, the general editor of the Collected Letters of WB Yeats, recalled feeling disconcerted that he could have missed an entire collection of significant letters. “Upon inquiry, it turned out that the letters, then in a binder, had been stolen … and only recently and anonymously returned,” he said.

“It is not known whether the anonymous restorer was the original thief. That would seem plausible, but the Princeton catalogue ambiguously and perhaps magnanimously lists the letters as ‘a gift of anonymous’.”

His latest volume of letters cover the years 1908 to 1910, a period of uncertainty in the life of one of the greatest English-language poets of the 20th century, who received the Nobel prize in literature in 1923 “for his always inspired poetry”.

The letters were previously unpublished and recovered “in the nick of time”, Kelly said, for inclusion in the fifth of a 12-volume publication for Oxford University Press.

The 17 letters were written to his publisher, Arthur Bullen, and publishing assistant, Edith Lister, when they were working on Yeats’s collected works. Yeats hoped it would establish his reputation as a major poet, “justifiably, as it turned out”, Kelly said.

Despite their mutual admiration, Yeats was angered by Bullen’s lax approach to business, Kelly said: “There were a number of eruptions … The first came when Bullen disclosed that he was going to print at twice the speed Yeats was expecting, so leaving him insufficient time for all the revisions and rewritings he wanted to do … One of the reasons the quarrels between poet and publisher did not lead to a permanent breach was the tact and intelligence of … Lister.”

He added: “A number of the letters in the stolen Princeton collection were to her and show how much Yeats relied on her quiet efficiency. She, like Bullen, was an admiring and sensitive reader of Yeats.”

The Princeton letters date from 1903 to 1913. Passages reflect his desperate pleas to be paid for his work. “I am desperately hard up and owe about £20,” one said.

Another letter refers to a dispute over whether four portraits of Yeats should be grouped together in the collected works, as Yeats thought they had agreed, before discovering Bullen wanted them scattered throughout the edition.

Yeats wrote to Lister: “I am sorry I wrote so harshly to Mr Bullen. But his own letter to me was provocation enough. He arranges things with me (as he did the length of time the printing was to take), we get everything quite precise, and then he writes to me accusing me … who am simply doing what we agreed upon, of springing something upon him, or of breaking some arrangement.

“He forgets things and I see now that when he and I make any plan, we must set it down in writing … I am so busy now with every moment of my time marked out that a little thing, even a small change of plans, puts all astray.”

Asked what Yeats would have thought of the letters’ theft and recovery, Kelly said: “He would have been perhaps irritated at first, and then quite amused.

“Yeats never made much money as a poet until quite late, so he used to sell off occasionally some manuscript. One young man came round and said ‘the cheque’s in the post, I’ll just take the things now’. He slipped off with them and never paid. Yeats was cross, but kind of amused at the same time.”

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Reposted from Europol

Two weeks ago, at 04:00 in the morning, more than 250 police officers searched simultaneously 40 houses in the Italian regions of Sicily, Calabria, Piedmont, Apulia as well as in Ehningen (Germany), London (UK) and Barcelona (Spain).

On the basis of European arrest warrants, 23 suspects were detained. Over 25 000 archaeological items were seized as part of this investigation, worth a total of EUR 40 million.

The investigation, initiated 4 years ago by the unit specialized in the trafficking of cultural goods of the Italian Carabinieri and supported by its counterparts at the Spanish Guardia Civil, the British Metropolitan Police and the German LKA of Baden-Württemberg, revealed that the organised crime group behind the illegal excavation and trafficking of cultural goods was very well organised, operating from several EU Member States.

In the district of Caltanisetta, in the center of Sicily, which is rich in archaeological sites from the Greek and Roman epochs, local members of the organised crime group illegally excavated artifacts which were then brought out of Italy, equipped with false provenances and sold via German auction houses. Key facilitators were also acting from Barcelona and London, coordinating the supply chain and providing technical support.

Prior to the action day, some 3 000 archaeological goods and 1 200 fake archaeological items were already seized by the Italian Carabinieri, worth at least EUR 40 million. Additionally, some 1 500 tools such as metal detectors used by the illegal diggers were confiscated.

The case, which is considered as one of the biggest in this crime area in Italian history; was actively supported by Europol which hosted and financed operational meetings, as well as the action day itself, thereby facilitating international information exchange. Europol also deployed a team of experts on the spot in Sicily on the action day to facilitate the immediate cross-checking of data.

This investigation once more shows that international cooperation is key to the success of such investigations in the field of trafficking of cultural goods, in which artifacts are moved through several EU countries and levels before they are brought to the legal market. Europol, with its unique analytical capacity, once again proved its key role as criminal information hub and facilitator of international Law Enforcement cooperation. Eurojust’s assistance has been crucial to coordinate the execution of the arrests and searches in the four Member States on the action day.

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Reposted from JTA

A bomb threat was called into the National Museum of American Jewish Military History in Washington, D.C., on Thursday.

The museum has been cleared by police and operations have returned to normal after it received the threatening call at around 12:30 p.m.

During the call, a male voice with a foreign accent said that there would be a bomb in the building on Thursday and Friday.

“It was shocking. I was stuck for a minute,” said Vincent Edwards, the museum’s communications center assistant.

Police searched the building, but no bomb was found. Operations returned to normal around 3 p.m.

Doron Horowitz, senior national security adviser at the Secure Community Network, said his organization was not aware of any other Jewish sites targeted on Thursday. SCN is an affiliate of the Jewish Federations of North America and advises Jewish groups and institutions on security.

The museum’s program and public relations coordinator, Anna Selman, told JTA that the situation was “stressful.”

“A lot of people in this building are military, so it’s something some of us have dealt with, but it’s definitely not normal,” Selman said.

The museum, founded in 1958, aims to preserve “the contributions of Jewish Americans to the peace and freedom of the United States … [and to educate] the public concerning the courage, heroism and sacrifices made by Jewish Americans who served in the armed forces.”

In the beginning of 2017, Jewish institutions in North America were targeted with hundreds of bomb threats, although the military history museum was not one of the targeted sites. Two men were convicted of making those threats.

In December 2017, a former journalist from St. Louis was sentenced to five years in prison for charges connected to eight of the threats as part of a revenge plot against a former girlfriend. In June, a 19-year old American-Israeli was convicted of making hundreds of the threats; his parents and lawyer have said he has a low IQ and a brain tumor.

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Reposted from The Bulletin

Librarians researching the history of the Deschutes Public Library recently discovered a forgotten, unsolved crime — the theft of a collection of rare artifacts stolen from the library’s basement 50 years ago.

The lost collection of weapons, books and mementos belonged to early Bend resident James Anthony Mitchell, a Civil War veteran and pastor in the Presbyterian church.

Nate Pedersen and Erin Weaver were compiling historic newspaper articles about the library for exhibits when they came across a Jan. 29, 1969, article describing the brazen burglary into the locked basement. Other than the basement door, there was only one way in.

“Leading into this room from the outside was a small window, hardly big enough for a slim youngster,” the article read. “There is a possibility some small person was lowered into the room.”

The Mitchell collection included guns, such as an 1866 Winchester, muzzle loaders from the frontier days and several antique bayonets and swords. The collection contained old books, some dating to 1620. The items in the collection were meant to be part of the city’s first museum.

The librarians’ discovery raised questions about the life of Mitchell, who is unfamiliar to local historians.

“I didn’t know of him at all,” said Pedersen, a member of the Deschutes Historical Society.

But Pedersen and Weaver learned a lot about Mitchell by reading the old newspaper clippings from The Bulletin.

Mitchell grew up in Illinois and enlisted at 17 to fight in the Civil War. He fought in Sherman’s March to the Sea, a famous battle in Georgia in 1864. Mitchell later became a missionary and traveled across Europe for more than a year. During his travels, Mitchell collected souvenirs from places all over the globe.

A Bulletin article from July 19, 1923, described Mitchell’s collection as “a wealth in war implements of every civilized nation.” His collection contained swords, firearms, maps, tapestries, Native American relics, stones, hides, flags and books.

The collection included Civil War relics, such as a letter a soldier wrote to his son in April 1863, a poster celebrating the fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and a National Union Party ticket for the 1864 presidential election when Abraham Lincoln was a candidate.

Mitchell moved from Los Angeles to Bend in 1905. He reportedly divorced his wife and left her and their five children in California.

As a worldly person, Mitchell brought rich culture to the Central Oregon frontier town. He put on and starred in Shakespearean plays, including “The Merchant of Venice” and “Macbeth.”

He hosted lectures, similar to modern day TED talks or History Pub talks at Bend’s McMenamins Old St. Francis School. He gave lectures on the catacombs in Italy and one talk in 1910 titled, “What is the trouble with Portugal?”

Having such a cultured person in the isolated High Desert community must have been a treat for the local residents, Pedersen said. Many people at that time could not afford to travel the world by train and transatlantic ships, he said.

“It was probably really attractive to Bend residents to hear about places in the world they would never get a chance to visit,” Pedersen said.

Mitchell, who served as the Presbyterian Church pastor in Bend without pay, died of heart failure at 64 in 1911. He was found kneeling at his bedside. He appeared to be praying. Newspaper headlines at the time read, “Pastor Dies in Prayer,” and “Dies on Knees.”

The city purchased Mitchell’s collection from his estate for $187 in 1912. The collection changed hands over the years from the Ladies Library Club to the American Legion, and pieces were lost along the way. In 1922, the city formally gave the collection to the library, where many pieces sat in storage in the basement until the burglary in 1969.

No pieces of the collection remain today.

“It’s totally gone,” Pedersen said. “The burglary was the last straw.”

If any longtime Bend residents remember the burglary or know where the stolen items are being kept, the Deschutes Historical Museum wants to hear from them, Pedersen said.

“It would be really interesting if anyone had anything,” Pedersen said. “ My guess is whoever stole it, sold it underground to a collector, and it disappeared into someone’s private collection.”

A part of the collection was Mitchell’s scrapbooks that would have contained souvenirs and pictures of his travels as a missionary and his life in Bend. Such photos would be treasured by local historians, more than the weapons and books, Pedersen said.

“From the historical perspective,” Pedersen said, “that’s a goldmine.”

But despite everything the two librarians learned about Mitchell, one big question remained: What did Mitchell look like? So far, no one has found a photograph. 

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Reposted from Observer.com

Caravaggio’s Nativity, stolen from the church of San Lorenzo in Palermo in 1969 and still missing, may be one step closer to recovery. Taken by members of Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia, during a time when Italy was cracking down on organized crime, its theft prompted the establishment of the world’s first dedicated art police unit, the Italian Carabinieri Division for the Protection of Cultural Heritage. But despite that effort, the painting has not been seen since.

Investigators rarely consider that a famous work of art has been stolen for display at some super villain’s lair. That far-fetched idea is largely a myth promoted in film and fiction (including one of my own books, I’m afraid, The Art Thief). The motive behind most cases of high-profile stolen art is more complicated, but also, in many ways, more interesting.

Simply selling ill-gotten art is supremely difficult. Much stolen art is believed to enter a closed black market, used as barter or collateral in deals with other organized crime groups for other illicit goods. But there are some prominent exceptions to this rule, proving that sometimes life is really a lot like fiction. New evidence suggests the fate of this Caravaggio could be one such movie-esque example.

The most noted recovery attempt of the Caravaggio to date took place in 1979 when journalist Peter Watson went undercover for the Carabinieri, pretending to be a shifty art collector happy to deal in stolen art (he wrote of this adventure in The Caravaggio Conspiracy). When police are able to discover who was behind a theft it’s often through a paid network of criminal informants. The Carabinieri had learned that Cosa Nostra members were boasting possession of the painting, and Watson was recruited to lure them into offering it to him. He concluded that Cosa Nostra was indeed very likely in possession of the Caravaggio, but he was not offered it for sale—instead he was offered a Bronzino and an Andrea del Sarto, which were recovered through this sting operation.

In 1996, a mafia penitento (an informant) claimed that he had stolen the Caravaggio on the request of a high-ranking boss. In 2009, another penitento asked about the Caravaggio and said that he’d heard, back in 1999, that the painting had been ruined during an earthquake while in storage in Sicily, and had subsequently been eaten by rats and pigs rooting through the rubble. The work still hovers at the top of the FBI’s Most Wanted Stolen Works of Art list, but it has since been labelled “missing, presumed destroyed.”

But new hope recently dawned. Yet another penitento has claimed to the Carabinieri that the Caravaggio remained intact and was acquired by mafia boss Gaetano Badalamenti, who was in touch with an art dealer in Switzerland prior to his arrest in 1984. The head of Italy’s anti-mafia unit announced last week that there was “enough evidence to launch a new investigation,” with a focus on Switzerland. So it is entirely possible that the painting has survived its kidnap by Cosa Nostra and can be found again.

As I noted in Art Crime: Terrorists, Tomb Raiders, Forgers and Thieves, art police say that most art crime since the 1960s has involved organized crime at some point in the life of the crime (either through theft, smuggling, laundering or fencing). This definition includes both smaller groups working together in criminal enterprises for collective, long-term goals (as opposed to quick cash crimes) and large criminal syndicates, or “mafias.”

Major syndicates have been involved in innumerable high-profile art crimes. The Corsican mafia was responsible for a string of thefts along the French Riviera in the 1960s and ’70s; the Balkan mafia has certainly played role in art thefts in Zurich, such as the 2008 heist from the Buehrle Collection; there’s reason to believe the Russian mafia was involved in several thefts of Edvard Munch paintings; and of course there’s Cosa Nostra and our missing Carravagio. But law enforcement the world over is pretty bad at prosecuting art crime. As I showed in The Museum of Lost Art, as little as 1.5 percent of art theft cases end with the recovery of the object and successful prosecution of the criminals. Police learn who is, or which groups are, behind art heists through criminal informants, but such information must be taken with a grain of salt. For example, how do they know which mafia penitento is telling the truth about the Caravaggio Nativity theft? All they do know is that the group was somehow involved.

Peter Watson’s experience trying to recover the Nativity shows how murky the task of assigning motive can be when it comes to an art heist. After all, art syndicates are almost always involved in such instances of high-profile theft, yet their viable options for what to do with the work are slim. Watson wasn’t offered the Carravagio but he was offered other work they had acquired, suggesting that resale is at least the reason some works of art have been snatched. The Carabinieri helped build an identity and history for Peter Watson that suggested that he was a legitimate art dealer who was not afraid to buy questionable pieces. Known art dealers and art world personalities contributed to this subterfuge, providing documents, letters, contracts, etc. which would give the impression that Watson’s character had a long career as a dealer.

They must have done the job well. The representatives of Cosa Nostra failed to detect his undercover status. And criminals are clearly under the impression that there’s a market out there for stolen art. But did they get this impression from experience or assumption? Connecting with such individuals can be difficult, even for groups with an elaborate international network at their disposal. Watson’s experience speaks to this difficulty, too, because if said criminal collectors were easy to find, the stolen art would have already been sold, or Watson would have been asked to bid against other potential buyers in the closed black market of stolen art. Criminals seem to believe that they can find Dr. No or Thomas Crown criminal art collector types as seen in films. Some certainly must exist, otherwise the Cosa Nostra wouldn’t have fallen for Watson’s disguise, but there have been precious few such figures in confirmed historical case studies.

So in general, it’s understood that the major reason the mafia has been involved in art theft is to conduct closed deals among a circle of criminal groups. As in the case of a 1986 heist carried out by Martin Cahill (head of an Irish organized crime group) of 18 artworks from Russborough House, stolen art is used as collateral on loans and in a barter system for other illicit goods. As I outlined in Art Crime: Terrorists, Tomb Raiders, Forgers and Thieves, a Vermeer taken by Cahill was smuggled to Antwerp where it was used as collateral on a loan, the cash from which bought wholesale drugs to sell on the street. This became clear when several criminals involved were arrested. A Gabriel Metsu painting also taken then was recovered in Turkey being swapped for a shipment of heroin. Thus, art stolen from extant collections can provide a variety of benefits for major organized crime groups.

But then there are the surprises that add fuel to the misconception that most stolen artworks end up at the homes of Dr. No-like figures. The 2002 theft of two Van Gogh paintings, View of the Sea at Scheveningen and Congregation Leaving the Reformed Church in Nuenen, from Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum on 7 December 2002 remained a mystery for more than a decade, with no promising leads on recovering the works. It came as a surprise when, in September 2016, Italian police involved in an unrelated raid on the holiday home of a member of the Camorra, the Campanian mafia, spotted the two Van Goghs proudly on display.

It’s cases like this that give life to the idea of the criminal art collector, even though such verified examples are few and far between. And yet they also serve to provide hope that perhaps some of our lost masterpieces (or even some of the tens of thousands reported stolen each year to Interpol) have been carefully preserved somewhere, hanging on a crime boss’s wall. For the world’s sake, we can only hope that Carravagio has met such a fate.

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Reposted from Campus Life Security

High Point University participates in Protect-in-Place drill following incidents on campuses across the country

It happened at 11:46 a.m. on a Friday, just three weeks before the Parkland shooting. A southeastern university issued a campus-wide emergency notification advising a gunman was on or near campus, and that individuals should seek protective shelter immediately.

The incident was scary, but no gunman existed. This scenario was only an exercise where High Point University members, including students (for the first time), participated in the “Protect-in-Place” response strategy. (This campus chose not to use the “Lock-down” term as it is a misnomer for a Higher Ed campus.)

Evaluators moved quickly through academic buildings checking door handles and peering through door windows. Acting from the perspective of an armed assailant, these evaluators noted any opportunities that would have made them more capable of hurting their intended targets. At the end of the drill, an all-clear message was announced and activities resumed as normal.

During the exercise “hotwash” or debriefing, the drill’s evaluators assessed how well the university responded, what deficiencies were noted as well and what can be improved. Each shared their observations from their respective buildings, including who didn’t participate in the drill or if any environmental obstacles created challenges.

Following the hotwash, emergency management and security staff drafted an After Action Report (AAR) and Improvement Plan for senior administration, outlining the strengths and areas of weakness that the drill exposed. An AAR and improvement plan is created following any exercise or real-world emergency and the recommendations are prioritized and implemented, allowing for a process of continuous improvement.

EXERCISE DESIGN AND GOAL SETTING

The first step for conducting a successful exercise is to outline the scope of the exercise by identifying intended goals. Target a particular response procedure and/or systems. A common pitfall in exercise design is that either goals are not clearly established or the exercise has too many unfocused goals. 

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