Step Into Security Webinar - Threat Assessments for K-12 & University Campuses

Threat Assessments for
K-12 & University Campuses

Today’s
Moderator
Keith Harris
Marketing Manager
LENSEC

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Based in Houston, TX
Since 1998
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Our Mission

Webinar
Logistics
Q&A at the end
Questions for the panelist
Audio from attendees muted
Poll questions
Survey

Today’s
Panelist
Gary L. Sigrist, Jr.
President & CEO
Safeguard Risk Solutions
30 year career as an educator, administrator, &
police officer
Nationally known speaker
Safety Consultant
Helps clients identify vulnerabilities, plan accordingly,
train thoroughly & respond effectively

Training
Goal
Threat Assessment for K-12 & University Campuses
Topics for Webinar:
Threat Assessment Principles
Facts About Targeted Attacks
Five Phases of an Active Shooter Incident
Prevention of the Threat
Assessing Mental Health Risk
Profiling for Potential Threats

Research
Secret Service Safe
School Initiative
Response to Columbine
Marisa Reddy, Ph.D.
Threat Assessments for
K-12 & University Campuses
https://www2.ed.gov/admins/lead/safety/preventingattacksreport.pdf

Campus Violence Perpetrators
Don’t ‘Just Snap’
Incidents Aren’t Impulsive or
Random
Consider, Plan & Prepare
Violent Behavior
Discuss Plans With Others
Before the Attack
Threat Assessments for K-12 & University Campuses

Subject’s Appearance Doesn’t Elicit
Concern
Subject’s Behavior Does Elicit Concern
No Unique Profile for a Campus Attacker
Others are Concerned With Troubling
Behavior Before Attacks
Subject’s are Suicidal or Display
Desperation Before Attacks

Poll
Question
Poll Question #1
Is an active shooter event typically well
planned or spontaneous?

Five Phases of an Active Shooter Incident
Conceptualization
Fantasy
Difficult to detect
Possible leakage
Planning
Who, what, where and when
Weapons
Possible Leakage
Preparation
Obtaining weapons
Overt leakage
Approach
Implementation

Threat Assessment
Threat - An expression of intent to
harm someone
Threat Assessment is a process of
evaluating a threat and the
circumstances around it to uncover
facts to indicate whether the threat
is likely to be carried out and then
what should be done about it

Implications for Prevention
Many targeted attacks can be prevented.
Information about a subject’s ideas and plans for
violence can be observed or discovered before
harm can occur.
Information available is likely to be scattered and
fragmented.
Key is to act quickly upon an initial report of concern.
Determine who else has a piece of the puzzle.
Pull all the information together to see what
picture emerges.

Implications for Prevention
Assessment involves asking: Is this person on a
pathway toward violence?
Using a team can be particularly effective
Gathering and evaluating information
Intervening if necessary
Threat assessment and case management is
not an adversarial process
Engagement with a person of concern can be critical to preventing violence or
harm

Poll
Question
Poll Question #2
A mental health assessment of a
threatening student helps …

Mental Health Risk Assessment
Also known as a clinical assessment of
dangerousness
Evaluates a person’s risk for more
general/prevalent types of affective
violence
Not intended (nor effective) for
evaluating risk of a targeted attack
May supplement threat assessment
process but is not a replacement

Automated Decision Making
Two Areas of Concern:
The statistical or mathematical
process for making the
evaluation is unknown
No correlation between
satisfaction with using the
automated tool and the
accuracy of the decision
made

Profiling
Most commonly used as an
investigative tool to describe the
person or type of person who
committed a particular crime
It is retrospective in that it uses
clues from a crime that has
already occurred to narrow
down possible suspects
When used with respect to
evaluating risk of violence,
profiling is prospective, not
retrospective

Prospective Profiling

Profiling
Two Major Failings:
It identifies far more people
that match a profile but do
not pose a threat
It fails to identify a person
whose behavior suggests real
concern but whose traits or
characteristics do not match
the profile

Threat Assessment Process

Why Threat Assessment?
Evidence-based and derived from:
U.S. Secret Service protective intelligence research
Safe School Initiative
FBI research regarding workplace violence
Student development (Ursula Delworth, 1989)
Used successfully to prevent campus, school, and workplace shootings

#1 Prevention is Possible
Acts of targeted violence typically
follow a logical progression of
behavior
Conceptualization
Planning
Preparation
Approach
Implementation
This allows opportunities for
behavioral progression to observed

#2 Violence is a Dynamic Process
Not asking whether this is a
“violent person”
Looking at changes in
circumstances, situation, and its
impact on the person in question

#3 Targeted Violence is the product of an interaction among four factors:
- SUBJECT may take violent action
- Vulnerabilities of the TARGET of such actions
- ENVIRONMENT facilitates/permits violence, or does not discourage it
- PRECIPITATING EVENTS may trigger reactions
Source: G. Deisinger & M. Randazzo

Distress Disturbance Dysregulation Medical Disability(a parallel level of
risk to Dysregulation)
Emotionally troubled (e.g.,
depressed, manic, unstable)
Increasingly
behaviorally
disruptive; unusual,
and/or bizarrely acting
Suicidal (thoughts, feelings, expressed
intentions and ideations)
Profoundly disturbed, detached view of
reality
Individuals impacted by
actual/perceived situational
stressors and traumatic events
May be destructive,
apparently harmful or
threatening to others
Parasuicidal (extremes of self-injurious
behavior, eating disorder, personality
disorder)
Unable to care for themselves (poor
self care, protection, or judgment)
Behavior may subside when
stressor is removed or trauma is
addressed/processed
Substance misuse and
abuse; self-medication
Individuals engaging in risk-taking
behaviors (e.g., substance abusing)
At risk of grievous injury or death
without an intent to self-harm
May be psychiatrically
symptomatic if not
coping/adapting to
stressors/trauma
Hostile, aggressive, relationally abusive Often seen in psychotic breaks
Individuals deficient in skills that
regulate emotion, cognition, self,
behavior, and relationships

Threat Assessment Team

Threat Assessment Process
THREAT
ASSESSMENT
PROCESS
Ability
(e.g., access,
means, capacity,
opportunity)
Thresholds
Crossed
(e.g., attack-
related behaviors,
rules broken)
Compliance with
Risk Reduction
(e.g., interest in
reducing risk)
Concern by
Others
(e.g., student
discussed plan,
others are afraid)
Intent
(e.g., specificity
of plan, action
taken toward
plan)
Model Developed by the U.S. Secret Service

Threat Assessment Flow Chart

Poll
Question
Poll Question #3
What is a transient threat?

Evaluating & Classifying Threats

Practice Classifying Threats

Discipline & Threat Assessment
Two Different Processes
The District discipline code
determines the disciplinary
consequences for a threat
The “duty to protect” drives threat
assessment

Issues in Responding to Substantive Threats
The prevention of serious acts of planned violence requires a
systematic approach to assessing and managing risk for violence.
Management of threatening situations typically involves three
functions:
Controlling/containing the situation and/or student in a way that will prevent
the possibility of an attack
Protecting and aiding possible targets of the attack
Providing support and guidance to help the student resolve the issues giving
rise to an attack motive

Privacy & Emergency Communications
Federal and state law prevents the
disclosure of personally identifiable
information from a pupil record
unless the school can establish a
legally sufficient reason for the
disclosure

Privacy & Emergency Communications
A school district may disclose information from a pupil record in
connection with an emergency if knowledge of the information is
necessary to protect the health or safety of the pupil or other person,
the determination is based on an articulable and significant threat to
the health or safety of a pupil or other individuals, and the disclosure
is limited to those persons who can take protective actions
(Title 34, Code of Federal Regulations, Section 99.32)
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/pdf/ferpa-disaster-guidance.pdf

Practice Responding to Threats
An angry student says, “I’m going
to kill you.” Now that the threat has
been resolved as transient, what is
the next thing to do?
Take No Further Action
Suspend The Student For 5 days
Refer The Student For A Mental
Health Assessment
Refer The Two Students For Conflict
Mediation

Two students argue, and one punches the other. The
student has assaulted his classmate, but he has not
expressed an intent to harm him in the future, so no
threat has been made. The student admitted that he
should not have lost his temper but acted in self-
defense. Is there anything else to do?
Take No Further Action
Discipline The Student For Punching A Peer
Interview The Students To Determine If They Still
Want To Fight
Refer The Two Students For Conflict Mediation

A student tells a friend that he will beat up
someone in the parking lot after school. The
student was uncooperative, and you classified the
case as a serious substantive threat. What else do
you do?
Notify the intended victim
Ask the school police officer to arrest the student
Refer the student for a mental health assessment
Take protective action by notifying the student’s
parents and having them take their son home
after school

A student is found with a list of student names
under the heading “Scheduled to Die.” The
student was sullen and uncooperative, and you
did not believe the student was joking or simply
trying to get attention. The threat also involved
a felonious assault, so you classified the threat
as a very serious substantive threat. What
should you do?
Refer the student for a mental health assessment
Notify the intended victims and the victims’ parents
Consult with law enforcement
Expel the student for his plans to carry out a very
serious substantive threat

Internal Threat Detection
Listen, Watch, Report
Develop a culture that
encourages students to speak up
and to seek a trusted adult
Encourage students that it’s OK to
“talk” about things they hear and
see. Sometimes their peers are
not “just joking”
Encourage faculty to share
concerns
Offer some form of anonymous
reporting

Threat Assessments
Recommended by the US Secret Service
and the US Department of Education
Preventive measures not reactive
measures
Protects the victim
Gets help for the troubled person

Contacts
Keith Harris
LENSEC
(512) 913-3907
kharris@lensec.com
Gary L. Sigrist, Jr.
Safeguard Risk Solutions
(614) 679-5608
gary@safeguardrisksolutions.com

Thanks for Attending
Today’s Webinar

SIS11-16 Webinar: Threat Assessments – Questions & Answers
Poll Question #1
Is an active shooter event typically well planned or spontaneous?
1 - Well Planned
2 - Spontaneous
Poll Question #2
A mental health assessment of a threatening student helps ____________________.
1 - Evaluate a person’s risk for violence
2 - Evaluate a risk of targeted attack
3 - Administration develop a risk plan
Poll Question #3
What is a transient threat?
1 - Threat is committed by a person not regularly on campus
2- Threat to kill a faculty member or student
3 - Threat not expressing lasting intent to harm another person
Questions & Answers
Q: Is it true that threat assessment teams have been known to prevent targeted acts of
school violence?
A: I would say almost every week a targeted act of violence is stopped in a school simply
because a threat was made know to school officials and the threat was investigated.
Long before Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” campaign, this is
what we were recommending for schools based on the Secret Service’s safe school
initiative. Every threat is evaluated to determine if it is a very serious, substantive threat
that poses a risk to students. If you want to look your parents in the eyes and say, “One
of the ways we are preventing violence from happening in our school is we have a
threat assessment team to evaluate every threat to our school.” This threat assessment
process for those of you that attended the bomb threat protocol training, it’s the same
thing. Every time a bomb threat comes in, we assess that threat.
Q: Should law enforcement have direct access to school video surveillance systems?
A: The answer is, they’re not allowed to unless they can articulate a specific threat at a
specific time. Here’s an example: I received a call from a local law enforcement agency
requesting video of a fight in a local high school. The incident occurred two weeks prior
and the parents were pressing charges. If it happened two weeks ago, there is not a

current threat. In that case I said, “I will get you a copy of the tape, but I need for you to
get me a subpoena.” So it was not an adversarial process, they gave me the subpoena
and I gave them a copy of the tape. A public records request is not enough to get a copy
of the tape. The news media can’t get access to the same tape. The police, with a
subpoena, can get it as a part of their investigation. After the investigation is over, the
news media can obtain a copy of the tape from the police department via an open
records or Freedom of Information request. The school can’t be held liable. On the
other hand, if there is a kidnapping in front of the school and police request immediate
access to the surveillance video, a subpoena is not needed because it’s an exigent
circumstance. That means we can articulate that the safety of that child overrides
FERPA.
Q: We have a limited budget for safety and security. We want to spend our money on
something that is sustainable. How are threat assessment teams sustainable?
A: Threat assessment teams are sustainable because you can train staff. For example, let’s
say we have five buildings. In each building, we train the administrators, counselors and
staff members. That training can last 5 to 10 years depending on the longevity of your
staff. If you lose one or two members in one building, you can get staff members from
other buildings to help fill in the gap in your threat assessment team. If you put a metal
detector in your building and it breaks down, how are you going to pay for it? But, if you
train your staff, that training can be passed along which is what makes it sustainable.
Q: Why do we want to keep a student who has made a threat in school? Wouldn’t it be
safer to expel the student and keep them away from other children?
A: We are going to temporarily remove that child from school for a couple of reasons. First
of all, we have to create a safety plan. The number one thing is making sure that the
students and staff are safe in the school. However, if we take a typical sixteen year old
who is expelled from school, that child is going to be home alone because parents work.
So now that child is going to be home alone with access to the internet and access to
other things. If that child is not getting the help they need to get them off of the
pathway to violence, you’ve got a problem situation just waiting. But if we create a
safety plan to bring the child back to school, assuming we have cooperative parents, the
child has to meet certain criteria in order to regain admission.
Q: How does the threat assessment team fit into the four phases of emergency
management?
A: The threat assessment team fits into the prevention and mitigation phase as well as the
planning stage. We recommend putting something into place to prevent the attack from
occurring. Do we want to prevent a car crash from happening or do we want to deal
with it after it occurs? Let’s prevent the car crash from occurring in the first place. It’s
less traumatic emotionally, it’s less traumatic physically, and it’s better for our school
and our community.

LINKS
Secret Service Safe School Initiative:
https://www2.ed.gov/admins/lead/safety/preventingattacksreport.pdf
FERPA Disaster Guidance:
https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/pdf/ferpa-disaster-guidance.pdf

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