Making Prevention a Reality

Preventing Targeted Violence or Active Shooters IS possible! In fact, in recent years in schools alone, over 2,000 school shootings were averted!

A study of these averted shootings vs. events where the shooters planned events where actually occurred reveals startling and valuable isight in understanding how to intervene and prevent these tragic events.

Central to the prevention of Targeted Violence is the advent of Behavioral Threat Assessment (BTA). Persons of Concern follow a well described Pathway to Violence. Along that pathway, ‘leakage’, or broadcasting their intended violent event.

Behavioral Threat Assessment teams are multi-disciplinary team of trained professionals who use a defined process of evaluating information reported related to ‘leakage’ from the person of interest. They then determine the credibility of the threat, and where indicated, intervene to help take the person of interest of of the pathway to violence, and on to a healthier pathway to living a successful life.

Making Prevention a Reality lays out a blueprint to creating, and effectively operating a Behavioral Threat Assessment Teams.

“The FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) held a symposium in mid-2015, bringing together academic researchers, mental health experts, and law enforcement practitioners of threat assessment to discuss the active shooter phenomenon. Specifically, symposium participants focused on prevention strategies with regard to this crime problem. By far the most valuable prevention strategy identified was the threat assessment and management team. The good news is that every organization and community has the potential to stand up or access such a team” - from Making Prevention a Reality: Identifying, Assessing and Managing the Threat of Targeted Attacks - U.S. Dept of Justice / Federal Bureau of Investigation