Report page 45

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.

These interactions provide opportunities for the BTAU to gather new information about the individual’s behaviors from people who know them and to corroborate information already identified in the assessment.

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.

Establishing rapport continues to be important when engaging with the individual’s family, friends, and other support networks. The people in these systems should be made aware that the BTAU’s primary goal is to prevent negative outcomes, in part by getting help for their loved one, friend, or colleague.

While gathering information from the subject’s formal and informal systems, BTAUs should focus on exploring each of NTAC’s 20 Assessment Themes.

Assessment Themes are not intended to be used as a checklist. The purpose of Assessment Themes is to provide a broad scope through which to understand an individual’s behavior and the context in which they are operating.

These themes have been identified by decades of Secret Service research examining targeted violence in a variety of forms, including acts of mass violence targeting public spaces in the United States. Assessment Themes are based on frequently observed or particularly noteworthy factors in the backgrounds of those who have engaged in previous acts of targeted violence.

Gathering this information will allow the BTAU to assess if the individual poses a risk of violence and plan the interventions needed to mitigate that risk.

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.

Examining each of these Assessment Themes will provide the BTAU with comprehensive information to assess if the individual poses a risk of violence by identifying the contextual themes that may impact the individual’s thinking and behavior, the behavioral themes they have exhibited, and the summative themes that must be considered as part of an overall assessment.

Exploring each theme is necessary for a thorough assessment and may uncover other avenues of inquiry.