Safety and Security

We stand united as a community in protecting each and every member of our translational research teams – from veterinarians to principal investigators and clinicians.

NWABR is ready to meet at any time with your Crisis Management Teams to make certain that our leaders – Institutional Officials, IACUC Chairs, Legal Counsel, Biosafety Officers, Facilities, Security, Human Resources and Communications Directors are proactively positioned and always prepared.  Our research facilities have a great deal to learn from one another; we are our own best resources.

Leaders from within NWABR’s Security and Communications Network across our member institutions determine the priority issues we choose to address and with whom we need to coordinate.  For more than two decades, we have worked in close coordination with US Attorneys and their staffs from the Districts of Oregon and Washington, local police and law enforcement, US Marshalls Service, the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, the US Postal Inspection Service, local law enforcement and campus police, among others.  

Heightened awareness of domestic terrorist organizations and the threats they continue to pose to biomedical and horticultural researchers and facilities is a constant.  We have convened key leadership in Seattle, Portland, Spokane and Moscow, and have utilized the internet to bring sites across the region into the discussion.  

Recent examples of topics addressed:  

• The hiring process: What you can and cannot screen for in advance; how to bring new people into the culture of care that you have established.  
• Safeguarding Biomedical Research Facilities:  Data and Equipment Protection, Personal Protection
• Intelligence on Ecoterrorists:  What we learned from the 9 years of FBI investigations leading to the successful prosecutions of those involved in the destruction of the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture; private session with UW Attorney Karen Immergut and her Assistant USAs.
• Terrorism through the Mail:  How to Screen and Handle Suspicious Mail and Packages
• Activism, Hacktivism and Cyber Sabatage
• Multiple Approaches to Security:  People, Technology and Culture