L AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N TL AW E N F O R C E M E N T

3 TRIBES IN OKLAHOMA SUE GOVERNOR OVER CASINO GAMBLINGBy Sean Murphy | Associated Press

Three of the most powerful tribes in Okla-homa filed a federal lawsuit against the state’s governor on Tuesday, asking the court to help resolve a dispute over gambling at tribal casinos.

The Cherokee, Chickasaw and Choctaw nations want a federal judge to determine whether the state compacts that allow gam-bling exclusively at tribal casinos automatically renew on Jan. 1 for another 15-year term. The tribes contend all the conditions have been met for the compacts to renew.

“For some time, we have tried to establish meaningful intergovernmental engagement regarding our gaming compacts, but you have continued to reject our compacts’ plain terms,” Cherokee Nation Chief Chuck Hoskin, Chick-asaw Nation Gov. Bill Anoatubby and Choc-taw Nation Chief Gary Batton wrote in a joint letter to Stitt on Tuesday. “Recently, you have gone further, stating allegations against us and threats to our operations.”

Oklahoma’s new Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt contends the gaming compacts expire on Jan. 1 and that casino gambling after that date will be illegal. Stitt has signaled he wants to renegotiate the compacts to give the state a larger slice of revenue. An attempt by Stitt

earlier in December to offer an extension of the compacts while negotiations continued was rejected by most of the tribes.

Stitt announced Tuesday that two of the 39 federally recognized tribes in the state — the Kialegee Tribal Town and the Unit-ed Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians — agreed to an eight-month extension of the compacts.

“The state of Oklahoma offered an exten-sion, with no strings attached, to all tribes that operate casinos in the state, and my door con-tinues to be open for more tribes to join who are worried about impending uncertainty,” Stitt said in a statement.

Stitt added that he was disappointed that most of the other tribes in the state rejected his previous offers for arbitration or a tempo-rary extension.

The dispute between the governor and the tribes has grown contentious since Stitt first signaled in an op-ed this summer that he want-ed to renegotiate the compacts. Last week, Stitt’s top adviser on tribal issues, Lisa Billy, resigned and accused the governor of creating an “unnecessary conflict” with the tribes.

Tribal officials have signaled they are open to renegotiating the rates of the compacts, but

not until the governor acknowledges that the compacts renew on Jan. 1. Stitt has not con-ceded that point and maintains the compacts expire.

Under the existing compacts, approved by Oklahoma voters in 2004, tribes pay the state “exclusivity fees” between 4% and 10% on gambling revenue in exchange for the exclusive right to operate casinos. Those fees generated nearly $139 million for the state in the 2018 fiscal year, most of it earmarked for education, on roughly $2.3 billion in revenue from games covered under the compacts.

Since the compacts were approved, casino gambling has exploded in Oklahoma with more than 130 casinos dotting the state, rang-ing from gas station annexes to resort-style casinos, many of them in border communities. The Winstar World Casino in a rural part of the state’s Red River border with Texas includes massive hotel towers, more than a dozen restaurants and a 400,000-square-foot (37,161- square-meter-) casino floor billed as the largest in the world. Tour buses filled with gamblers from neighboring Texas routinely shuttle into the casino’s parking lot, which is also packed with cars sporting Texas license plates.

YEAR-END VIOLENCE HIGHLIGHTS DANGER OF WORSHIPPINGBy Gary Fields & David Crary | Associated Press

When a machete-wielding attacker walked into a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York, during Hanukkah and a gunman fired on worshippers at a Texas church 14 hours later, the two con-gregations in different regions of the country joined a growing list of faith communities that have come under attack in the U.S.

It is a group that crosses denominations and geography and has companions around the world. The frequency of attacks has faith leaders and law enforcement grappling with how to protect people when they are at their most vulnerable.

FBI hate crime statistics show that incidents in churches, synagogues, temples and mosques increased 34.8% between 2014 and 2018, the last year for which FBI data is available.

“For a person bent on hate crime against a particular religion or race, you go to a place where you know a lot of people in that group will be congregating — and vulnerable,” said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Boston’s Northeastern University. “One place you can go to find people of a certain religion is where they worship.” Most congregations, he said, do not have security.

Three of the deadliest attacks on congregation members have occurred since June 2015, when a gunman killed nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, according to a database compiled by The Associated Press, USA TODAY and Northeastern University. The database includes attacks where four or more victims are killed.

However, the database wouldn’t include the most recent attacks that have refocused attention on the security vulner-abilities at religious institutions.

The FBI’s hate crime highlights list a number of crimes, including a Colorado plot to blow up a synagogue, an Oregon man sentenced to federal prison for targeting a Catholic Church and two guilty pleas in the bombing of an Islamic Center in Minnesota where congregants were worshipping in the mosque.

A five-year compilation of AP reports showed the frequency

of attacks countrywide.Recent stories included the stabbing of an Orthodox Jewish

man as he approached the driveway of his synagogue in Monsey in November, as well as a Las Vegas incident where a suspect torched a Buddhist temple, then shot toward at least one monk fleeing the fire.

The data is definitive enough that the FBI invited faith leaders to its Washington, D.C., headquarters last June to discuss how to protect themselves and their congregants from bias-based attacks.

Mark Whitlock Jr., pastor of Reid Temple AME Church in Glenn Dale, Maryland, said his own staff and volunteers have met five times in the last month to discuss safety.

“Our first responsibility is to make sure our congregants have faith in God and second, that they are safe,” Whitlock said. “We must not create an environment of fear but we also must not fail to recognize things do happen and evil is present.”

Reid has a paid security staff of about 20 who wear uniforms and are armed. There are volunteers as well, made up of former and current federal agents, law enforcement officers and mili-tary who also provide security, Whitlock said.

Even with the protection, he is watchful. On Sunday, he was in the pulpit and saw the security force reacting to something. They explained later it was a stranger they wanted to identify.

“When you’re looking at thousands of people and you see your security force walking around, your mind begins to won-der,” he said.

The new spate of anti-Semitic attacks has added to the sense of urgency that’s been felt by Jewish security experts since the 2018 massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, where 11 people were killed.

“The greatest adversary we truly face is not an external threat, it’s a sense of denial,” said Michael Masters, national director of the Secure Community Network. It was formed by leading Jewish organizations in 2004 to coordinate a response to security threats.

“The conversation prior to Pittsburgh was whether safety

and security was necessary,” Masters said. “Now it’s a question of how do we effectuate that — there’s now a reality that these events can happen anywhere.”

Sunday’s attack in White Settlement, Texas, in which the gunman was shot dead by a highly trained leader of the church’s security team, came barely two years after more than two dozen people were killed at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. That remains the deadliest shooting at a house of worship in the U.S. in modern times.

The two Texas attacks have heightened worries among churchgoers in neighboring Oklahoma, said the Rev. Derrek Belase, a former police officer turned pastor who coordinates security training for the more than 480 United Methodist churches in Oklahoma.

“Texas is close to home for us,” Belase said. “People see it on the news and think, ‘That could be us.’”

Under Oklahoma law, houses of worship are among the places where adults are allowed to carry firearms, whether con-cealed or openly. Churches may ask worshippers not to bring guns with them, but Belase says that’s not a common request.

When Belase is advising churches on security, his core rec-ommendations are to work in tandem with local law enforce-ment, be wary of for-profit security consultants, and be sure that members of any church security team are thoroughly trained.

The security team leader in White Settlement “wasn’t just a guy with a gun,” Belase said. “He was trained to do that.”

Pardeep Singh Kaleka, executive director of the Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee, said his own Sikh temple has armed guards and an evacuation plan, the result of a 2012 attack in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, that killed six worshippers, including his father. He said the conference members talk regu-larly about how to prevent the next tragedy. “All faiths want to remain open, Buddhists, Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, Christians, but you also have to be vigilant and institute safety protocols.”

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