Community outreach and public messaging

As part of this overall structure, the BTAU should continue to promote a culture of prevention, both within the agency itself and among its community partners.

Externally, agency leadership can help promote a prevention mindset to other community organizations through the creation and strengthening of partnerships and through information-sharing efforts.

Defining the parameters of the program can also assist an organization with educating the larger community and other interested partners on the purpose of behavioral threat assessment and the role community members play in prevention.

Reporting systems must also be regularly promoted as a resource available to the public, making clear to bystanders that there is an avenue for them to report when they have concerns for the safety of themselves or others.

The agency should develop strategic efforts to promote a community culture that invites partner agencies into the behavioral threat assessment process, prioritizes relationship building and information sharing, and empowers community members to recognize and report concerning behaviors.

Conducting outreach to educate partner agencies and community members will help to establish trust and invite participation.

Through this process, BTAUs may identify success stories to share with relevant community partners, in accordance with any applicable privacy restrictions, to enhance awareness of the BTAU and promote engagement.

The relationships between the BTAU and its partner community systems are critical to the prevention of targeted violence.

In addition to sharing prevention resources across agencies and organizations, outreach will also promote the BTAU as a resource to those external systems when they are confronted with situations that elicit concern for safety.

Therefore, it benefits the BTAU when agencies and organizations across the community know where they can go for help.

Community systems that require proactive outreach from the BTAU include: • government agencies, • other law enforcement agencies, • businesses, • K-12 schools, • colleges and universities, • houses of worship, • mental health providers, • social service agencies, and • nonprofit service organizations.

Agency outreach can begin simply by hosting meetings between the BTAU and partner organizations. During the meetings, the BTAU can explain who they are, the purpose of behavioral threat assessment, how agencies can contact the BTAU to report individuals of concern, and what happens after reports are received.

The BTAU should emphasize that while they are a law enforcement entity, their primary objective in conducting behavioral threat assessments is prevention, and their approach is focused on facilitating proactive intervention with the individual of concern while achieving a positive outcome for the individual and the community.

As community relationships develop over time, the BTAU may choose to host training events, tabletop exercises, and other interactive engagements alongside partner organizations to promote a community culture of prevention. These types of proactive engagements help to ensure that multiagency collaboration does not occur for the first time in the midst of a crisis.

Bystander reporting is paramount to the success of the BTAU and should be the focus of community outreach efforts.

Public messaging campaigns should reach various community members with clear messaging about what concerns to report and how.

Billboards and posters in high-traffic and public areas can help to promote the simple message of reporting safety concerns to a centralized place.

A dedicated website can provide more detailed information about the BTAU’s role and can reiterate to the public the unit’s primary objective of violence prevention through early intervention, not criminal prosecution.

One example of public messaging is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s “If You See Something, Say Something®” campaign. This is a national campaign with the mission to raise public awareness around recognizing signs of suspicious activity that may indicate a potential nexus to terrorism, as well as how to report this activity to the appropriate law enforcement authorities.

For this campaign, DHS creates and disseminates public outreach materials, co-brands materials with partners, releases public service announcements, and develops strategic partnerships with public and private organizations who help amplify the message in their communities.