Shmira and Magen Am Join Forces to Strengthen LA Jewish Community Security

Los Angeles’ Jewish community has long relied on two distinct layers of local security. One is rooted in volunteer patrols, dispatch, and neighborhood response. The other is built on licensed guards, formal training, and armed Community Team Members. This week, the two came together. On September 8, 2026, Magen Am and Shmira Public Safety publicly announced a new alliance, promising to combine their teams, resources, and experience just as the High Holidays approach.

For a community that has waited a long time for this kind of coordination, the announcement is a genuinely exciting moment. The organizations describe it as “two organizations, one mission,” with messaging that leans into unity: “Same Values, One Mission,” “One Community, One Mission,” “Stronger Together.” Both patrols will be active through the High Holiday period, giving the community a visible, combined presence at exactly the time it matters most.

The two groups bring different strengths to the table. Magen Am has built out a licensed security program, with trained and vetted Community Team Members who go through formal certification before serving at congregations, schools, and events. Shmira brings the response side, built on a large and active volunteer network that has fielded a high volume of community calls over the past year, along with hands-on experience responding directly to incidents on the ground. Bringing those two pieces together—prevention and program on one side, response and community experience on the other—is the heart of what this alliance is meant to do.

The partnership did not come out of nowhere. Both organizations trace their roots to the unrest of 2020, when community members felt law enforcement resources were stretched thin and turned to their own trained, locally knowledgeable patrols. Magen Am, which had focused mainly on synagogue security, expanded into neighborhood patrols during that period, while Shmira’s predecessor groups organized in response to rioting, looting, and a rise in hate incidents around the same time. In the years since, especially after October 7, both organizations saw demand for their services grow sharply, and by June 2024 they were already showing up at the same incidents on the ground, working alongside each other and coordinating with local law enforcement.

There is still real work ahead. The organizations are actively building out how the alliance will function day to day, including communications and dispatch coordination, and those details will take some time to finalize. Leadership has been clear that the focus right now is on what this means for the community: better protection, a stronger shared program, and two organizations bringing their distinct strengths together rather than duplicating effort. The finer points of how that gets structured will come into focus in the months ahead.

As Ari Stock and Rabbi Yossi Eilfort describe it, this alliance is the product of their teams spending real time working together behind the scenes to make sure it actually serves the community well, not just on paper.

For now, the headline is simple. Two organizations that have long shared a mission, and have already stood side by side in moments that mattered, are formally joining forces heading into the High Holidays, with more to come as the alliance takes shape.