A former British police detective who once ran counterterrorism operations at the Mall of America is now advising churches, synagogues, and mosques across the United States on how to arm and train volunteers against active shooters — a mission that traces directly back to the 2017 massacre at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, where a gunman killed 26 people.
Simon Osamoh, who moved to the United States in 2010, met Frank Pomeroy, the pastor of First Baptist Church, after that shooting, according to The Independent. Pomeroy's 14-year-old daughter, Annabelle, was among those killed in the attack. The Independent reports that Osamoh now conducts vulnerability assessments for houses of worship nationwide, reviewing buildings, windows, doors, locks, and technology as part of his consulting work.
Osamoh advised the pastor of Westwood Community Church to buy an AR-15 after the Sutherland Springs shooting, per the same report, and he personally owns a .22, a 9mm handgun, an AR-15 and a shotgun. His reasoning centers on a stark tactical mismatch: he has said a handgun is not a fair match against an automatic rifle with a scope, and that most fatalities in an active shooter situation occur within the first 90 seconds — faster, he argues, than police can respond even when they are minutes away.
A Phased Approach, Not Just Guns
Despite his own arsenal, Osamoh insists firearms are not the sole focus of church protection. He advocates a phased approach that begins with an unarmed, trained observational team focused on threat detection, de-escalation and basic medical skills, according to the article. Only later does his model call for training selected church protectors to use firearms if necessary, and he has said congregations should also address mental-health issues as part of any protection strategy.
To train pastors on spotting warning signs, Osamoh uses the case of Gregory Eldred, who shot and killed his ex-wife at a Pennsylvania church in 2012, teaching leaders to identify behavioral indicators before violence occurs. The Independent notes that church security, in Osamoh's framing, exists to protect congregations while keeping churches open to everyone — a balance he says is central to his work, since open-door policies welcoming all visitors remain a defining feature of American churches.
From Scotland Yard Beat to Mall of America Counterterrorism
Osamoh's path to church security consulting began far from American pews. He joined the Thames Valley Police in England in 1998 and became a detective assigned to Reading police station in 2003, according to the Independent's reporting, accumulating 14 years as a UK police officer. During that career, he assisted a 2006 MI5 operation investigating a liquid-bomb terrorism plot, an operation that ultimately led to airports limiting the liquids passengers could carry through security. He also monitored the group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, which attempted to shut down Huntingdon Life Sciences in Oxfordshire.
Osamoh emigrated to the United States on October 17, 2011, and became head of counterterrorism at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, on December 3 that year — a sprawling complex spanning more than 5.6 million square feet with roughly 500 shops, an aquarium and an amusement park that draws 42 million visitors annually. He left that role in 2014 and founded Kingswood Security Consulting after a request from the Lakeville Police Department, according to VoyageMinnesota. Hosanna Church in Lakeville, Minnesota, now counts more than 3,800 congregants among the institutions he has worked with.
Building a Training Platform
Osamoh has since expanded beyond one-on-one consulting. He published the security guide Securing Church Operations in March 2024 and founded the Worship Security Academy along with an associated podcast, training faith leaders on security protocols, according to the Worship Security Academy. He had begun advising local congregations as early as 2012, while still working at the Mall of America.
The Numbers Behind the Fear
The statistical backdrop to Osamoh's work is sobering but narrow. The Violence Prevention Project has reported that 512 people have died in U.S. house-of-worship homicides since 2000, and that such killings account for less than 0.2 percent of all U.S. homicides, killing fewer than 20 people annually nationwide. Christian institutions account for 97 percent of affected religious-community incidents, per the same research cited in the Independent's report.
A 2026 report by CNA and the Violence Prevention Project identified 2017 as the deadliest year on record for house-of-worship homicides, with 47 people killed nationwide — 26 of them at Sutherland Springs alone, according to CNA. Separately, a Congressional Research Service analysis published by VOA found that mass shootings at U.S. houses of worship motivated by religious hate rose from just 1 percent of all mass shootings between 1966 and 2000 to 17 percent between 2018 and early 2020.
Legal Cover and Growing Threats in Texas
Texas lawmakers responded to Sutherland Springs by passing Senate Bill 2065, which exempted volunteer church security teams from the state's private security guard licensing and training requirements, as reported by the Texas Tribune. More recently, Senate Bill 694, effective September 2023, amended the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code to grant civil immunity from liability lawsuits to religious organizations and their volunteer or employee security personnel acting within the scope of their duties.
Meanwhile, the threat landscape has shifted. Firearm-related hostile incidents targeting U.S. churches more than doubled to 28 in 2024, up from 12 the year before, according to an August 2025 report by the Family Research Council — even as overall hostile acts against churches fell to 415 in 2024 from 485 in 2023. Federal agencies have also weighed in: the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency publishes guidance, including its Power of Hello framework, urging multi-layered observational teams and greeter vigilance to spot threats without closing church doors to the public.
A Federal Funding Bottleneck
For congregations seeking help paying for security upgrades, the federal government offers the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which provides up to $200,000 per facility and up to $600,000 for multi-site organizations to cover physical security improvements, access controls and active-shooter training. But demand vastly outpaces the money available — in 2024, more than 7,500 nonprofit organizations requested nearly $1 billion in funding, and less than half received awards, according to the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center. Federal lawmakers requested $1 billion for the program in fiscal year 2026 in an effort to work through the backlog of applications.
