Editor’s note: This article is reprinted with permission from the January 2024 issue of PORAC Law Enforcement News, the official magazine of the Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC).

It was 1600 on a Friday and we were finishing up teaching a weeklong course. The couple dozen cops in attendance had just completed the scenario portion of training and were off to work night shift or go home. Each officer left with a few more tools to help them when dealing with persons in mental health crises and persons who intend to commit acts of targeted violence. Our Behavioral Sciences Unit (BSU) had been teaching our 40-hour Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) course for over seven years, and this was the second time we had designated an entire training block specific to behavioral threat assessment and management. Good thing, too, because as Murphy’s Law would have it, we were not going to be enjoying our celebratory “we pulled it off” chips and guacamole and liquid refreshments after a weeklong training (talk about a raw deal); we would spend our night working a case. We had a live one.

Unfortunately, not having a crime may hinder aggressive forward movement from law enforcement but does not impede the forward movement of the aggressor.

Here were the circumstances. Patrol had received a call from the subject’s brother. He was concerned about a change in his brother’s demeanor over the last few months. He referenced a two-day old Instagram post that showed him inside a clothing store, wearing all black clothing and a tactical helmet, with a caption that stated, “The end of my life is coming. Retribution. We cannot live free in a world without freedom. We will reveal all in time. Boom! No more operatives. Boom! Can’t say more, they’re watching. Tick … Tick …” Our RP was unable to articulate any specific threats, partially because his brother, the subject, had stopped communicating with him directly about three months prior to the post. We didn’t have a 422, but we certainly had enough to do a “knock and talk.” When patrol went to the door for a welfare check earlier in the day, the subject wasn’t home, but his roommates were. There were five individuals living together in student housing associated with the local college. It was after patrol spoke with the roommates that our unit, the BSU, was called. Roommates disclosed the subject had always been a bit quiet, but ever since he had been fired from his last job two months ago, he became much more isolated and only engaged in benign conversations about things like rent and groceries. He (our subject) started wearing a bulletproof vest to places like the grocery store and the campus library. He was obsessively talking about his former employer in a negative light, saying they “made the wrong move,” they were getting ready to send covert operatives after him and “war was coming.” His roommates did not know where he was at the moment; his vehicle was not at the home. Our subject had three DROS (all purchased within the last six months) and was actively in the 10-day waiting period for this fourth.

I’ll pause here for a moment. First things first, we don’t have a crime, which is not uncommon in these cases. Unfortunately, not having a crime may hinder aggressive forward movement from law enforcement but does not impede the forward movement of the aggressor. It also doesn’t preclude the notion that there is an active threat we are concerned about that someone should be looking into and attempting to mitigate. But who investigates the threat and under what circumstances? Who is responsible for gathering intel, following up on patrol’s initial report and making contact with our subject? What happens if/when we conclude there is a credible threat even when the legal threshold for criminal threats has not been met? Even when our matrix allows us to conduct a formal threat assessment, who is responsible for the threat management component? “Threat assessment without threat management is an exercise in increasing blood pressure.” I concur.

The answers to the above depend heavily on multiple factors, some philosophical and some logistical. Some agencies have full-time threat assessment teams dedicated to working these cases. Other agencies have recognized the need and are having to build the plane as they fly it, and for some, the notion of engaging in noncriminal cases is, for the most part, off the table. I can tell you that as a police psychologist, reading the brief above sent the hair on my neck reaching for the sky.

My suspicion is that when you read the brief above, the hairs on your neck also stood at attention, or you recalled a case you’ve worked where they have. So let’s say this information came across your desk today. Given your agency, your assignment and your expertise, what is the next step? Who do you call?

There is no silver bullet, magic protocol or omnipotent decision tree for how to navigate these cases. The best practice for threat assessment and management is engaging a multidisciplinary team of subject-matter experts who are likeminded thinkers in the sense that they “get” the severity of the potential for violence. Effective threat assessment teams include stakeholders such as higher education, K–12 education, psychologists, county mental health agencies, district attorney’s offices, detectives, co-response teams, school resource officers, school counselors, etc. Essentially, a good team involves anyone who has a vantage point, perspective or influence on our person of concern. The practice involves getting these folks in a room to discuss the threat and ultimately recommend a course of action (or inaction, as it were).

The image on this page is from a psychological test called the Rorschach. If I were to ask 10 people to tell me what they saw in the drawing, I may get 10 different responses, or everyone might tell me the same thing. If we translate this to the threat assessment world and we’re no longer looking at an image but at a person, the same concept would apply. Let’s take the case above. As a psychologist, I am incredibly interested in the timeline of these events. I would be curious about the subject’s age, drug use history and family history of mental illness. In my mind, I am thinking this could be a psychotic break. The value in having this perspective on the team is that if the legal system is unable to mitigate the threat (we don’t have PC), the mental health system might. My line of inquiry would deviate from standard law enforcement questions but would be in service of the same goal — preventing targeted violence. Maybe we get enough collateral mental health information to substantiate a 5150, which would enact a five-year gun ban as well as force mental health treatment. Alternatively, let’s say this person isn’t experiencing a psychotic break but is just a “bad guy.” Remember, he lives in student housing and so perhaps the college administration could take some action and remove him from housing and stipulate he could finish his degree online. Though this doesn’t resolve the issue (he could still be a threat even if he lived farther away), we are putting barriers between him and the target — aka mitigating the threat. If we don’t have psychologists and school administration in the room, we may not be able to enact these tactics — there are absolutely and unequivocally ways to work outside of the legal system to help with these cases, but not if we aren’t in a room talking to each other. The following quote by psychologist Abraham Maslow comes to mind: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”

Unfortunately, these sorts of cases are increasing in volume, especially within the last three years. As an embedded psychologist at a sheriff’s office, I used to get one or two of these cases every few months, but now there are multiple per month. Perhaps it’s because we started training patrol on what we, the BSU, look for and why we want to know of these cases, or perhaps it’s because there is a true increase in the number of subjects who intend to carry out these acts. Regardless, I am thankful we have established a team so that we can roundtable these concerns, in real time, and turn over every rock we can to find a way to prevent what is preventable. There are several resources for agencies and individuals looking to become proficient at understanding and implementing threat assessment and management tactics and teams, which are far beyond the scope of this article to dive into. A good starting point is the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals (ATAP), which provides training and resources to both the public and private sector in this space. The FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) is also available for consultation, and they have a plethora of resources and data that help inform the notion that threat management can work — we just have to pay attention. Recently, I had the honor of going to a BAU threat management conference in Virginia, and I will leave you with one data point that stuck. According to BAU research, the odds of there being an active shooter increased 16 times if someone observed concerning behavior and didn’t do anything. Doing nothing is no longer an option.