Systems Approach

Requires corroboration from diverse sources. In addition to gathering information directly from the individual of concern, a behavioral threat assessment should evaluate information obtained from those who know the individual, as well as lawfully accessible information contained in records and other forms of documentation.

During this process, information will be gathered from a variety of community systems and should address the Assessment Themes identified by decades of NTAC research on targeted violence.

Secret Service research pioneered the Systems Approach to behavioral threat assessment when it published Protective Intelligence and Threat Assessment Investigations: A Guide for State and Local Law Enforcement Officials in 1998.

The guide describes how examining the “systems (family, work, community, criminal justice, mental health, and social services) that the individual is involved with are key to assessing and managing a potential threat.”

Gathering information from a variety of community systems will provide BTAUs with an organized and comprehensive way to assess an individual’s thinking and behavior.

The Systems Approach operationalizes how people tend to exhibit different behaviors in different environments. An individual’s communications and behaviors will often adapt to the context of their current situation.

For example, individuals may act differently when visiting family compared to how they act in a meeting with coworkers.

Therefore, gathering information from various community systems provides a more comprehensive and reliable assessment of an individual’s behavior than would be possible by only focusing on a single area of their life.

Utilizing the Systems Approach also allows BTAUs to corroborate information as it is gathered and make note of any inconsistencies or anomalies they identify.

Another benefit of the Systems Approach is that it allows BTAUs to connect pieces of information that are traditionally siloed.

In some cases, attackers had demonstrated concerning behavior at home, at work, in school, and online, but no program existed to examine all those behaviors together.

Additionally, information gathered from community systems can help to show changes in behavior over time.

For example, if a supervisor from an individual’s current workplace provides a starkly different description of the individual compared to a supervisor from a prior workplace, the BTAU may seek to identify any traumatic events or other situational factors that occurred during the timeframe of the individual’s current employment that could explain the dramatic change in behavior.

Community systems fall into two general categories: formal and informal.

Formal systems are structured organizations or groups that tend to maintain a physical location and records. Examples include judicial, law enforcement, employment, mental health, and education systems.

In these types of systems, there are often formal records that document an individual’s history of interaction with the systems (e.g., judicial records or education records). While such records can provide vital information for a behavioral threat assessment, it must also be noted that formal records sometimes lack context for explaining an individual’s behavior and rarely tell the whole story.

For example, a student may have a long history of eliciting safety concerns among teachers and classmates at a university, but there may be little documentation in their university education record regarding the concerning behavior or any interventions applied.

As another example, a man with a long history of stalking and harassing women may have a law enforcement record reflecting only a single charge of trespassing without any additional details about the months of behavior that led to the charge.

BTAUs should seek access to records from formal systems when authorized and in accordance with all relevant privacy protections. BTAUs may be able to access records from other law enforcement agencies, courts, and community organizations.

However, any information gathered should be further supplemented through appropriate interviews.

For example, if a BTAU obtains information through a police record provided by another agency, the BTAU may want to establish further context around the information by contacting the police department and officers who have previously interacted with the individual or by requesting more detailed police reports about those interactions.

Informal systems represent the less structured environments with which an individual routinely interacts, including family, friends, neighbors, and other community groups.

Unlike formal systems, informal systems rarely maintain records about an individual and instead provide information most often through interviews.

Interviews with informal systems provide BTAUs with the perspective of those who have maintained close or frequent relationships with the individual, sometimes over many years.

Online activity represents another informal system from which to obtain information to guide a behavioral threat assessment.

The initial interview with the individual of concern should be followed by corroborative interviews with other people across the individual’s formal and informal systems.

For example, when conducting a behavioral threat assessment involving the potential for workplace violence, the BTAU may conduct corroborative interviews with the individual’s coworkers and supervisor, in addition to the individual’s close family members.

For an assessment involving a student who threatened a school attack, the BTAU would likely interview the student’s parents, the student’s teachers, other school staff, and possibly classmates.

Information about Assessment Themes should be gathered using the Systems Approach described previously, namely through records checks, an interview with the individual of concern, corroborative interviews with others, and a review of open-source social media.

For example, BTAUs could identify a history of stalking and harassment both through an examination of criminal records and interviews with people who know the individual of concern. Similarly, BTAUs could identify concerning communications both through interviews and through an examination of the individual’s open-source social media posts.

The BTAU should make this assessment by considering all the information gathered about the Assessment Themes using the Systems Approach, while also considering any other situational factors.

There are four elements that should guide the management of concerning behavior during a behavioral threat assessment. BTAUs should take steps to: • address factors of concern and promote positive factors, • redirect potential motives for violence, • create a situation less prone to violence, and • utilize the Systems Approach for management.

This approach should be tailored specifically to the individual and the factors identified utilizing the Systems Approach and the Assessment Themes described in STEP 4.

STEP 4 of this framework discussed the importance of using the Systems Approach for information gathering and assessment. The Systems Approach also provides a framework for management by identifying community-level partners who can contribute resources toward the BTAU’s violence prevention efforts.

Violence prevention requires a community-wide approach, and law enforcement agencies must be prepared to leverage their partnerships with other agencies to help reduce the likelihood of violence.

ask the individual and their support systems if community services, such as alternative housing or counseling, would be beneficial.

▪Develop rapport ▪Involuntary holds ▪Removal of firearms ▪Wellness checks ▪Physical security ▪Open source monitoring ▪Consensual encounters ▪Making an arrest ▪Cross–jurisdictional collaboration ▪Crisis intervention

The BTAU should establish regular communication and check-ins with the identified support systems in the management plan and assess whether the interventions and strategies included in the plan are producing the intended result.

Systems Approach: A process of gathering information from various formal and informal community systems in order to provide a comprehensive and reliable assessment of an individual’s thinking and behavior.