BTAUs have been developed by state law enforcement agencies and within fusion centers across the country.
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State agencies may operate with broader authorities and with greater resources than smaller local agencies, and fusion centers provide law enforcement with opportunities to share information and intelligence, collaborate with partner agencies, maximize their resources, and streamline their processes.
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The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (NCSBI), for example, chose to establish its Behavioral Threat Assessment Unit, known as the BeTA Unit, as a part of the North Carolina Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAAC) with the goal of taking a proactive approach to violence prevention.
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One of the contributing factors to establishing the BeTA Unit in the ISAAC, a state fusion center, was the North Carolina General Assembly’s decision to provide the state fusion center with express legal authority to analyze information related to any threat of violence to an individual in a school or a place of worship (NC Gen Stat § 143B–929, 2022).
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Other examples include the Hawai’i State Fusion Center (HSFC), which supports Threat Team Hawai’i (TTH), a multidisciplinary team that identifies, assesses, and manages situations where the risk of targeted violence is imminent and/or anticipated.
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Similarly, in the nation’s capital, the DC Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA) established a behavioral threat assessment and management program as a part of the DC Fusion Center.
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Fusion centers allow multiple law enforcement agencies to share resources and information with the common goal of safeguarding the homeland and preventing crime and threats to public safety. Such a focus on prevention aligns with the primary objective of behavioral threat assessment, making fusion centers effective placements for BTAUs.
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Local agencies seeking to establish a BTAU can contact their local fusion centers and other regional partners to determine if such programs already exist and how they can create an agency-level BTAU that could collaborate with existing programs.
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