From Presidents to Children: Why Behavioral Threat Assessment Matters

Even going deeper than I mean, you know, one of the most important components to all of this is the behavioral threat assessment. Right? I've told people this a hundred times, and I'll continue to say it. The foundation of every security plan. It doesn't matter if it's protecting the president of the United States. Or if it's protecting America's kids, those that want to attack us are always signaling some type of behavior that leads us to believe that they wanna do this harm. You know, if you look at the the most recent publication from the United States Secret Service, that was published in January. We just had another one that came out yesterday, the bystander. It's a it's a supplement to the report that came out in two thousand eight. That said that at least one means of communication, and all of these incidents had occurred before these people took action. Right? And so looking back at the January twenty twenty three release, they investigated a hundred and seventy three cases from two thousand sixteen until twenty twenty two. And there was a hundred and eighty attackers in those hundred and seventy three instances and one hundred percent of all those attackers, they all exhibited the same signs and symptoms. And so, you know, imagine the power that we could have by just simply having a process of identifying these kids based upon their patterns of behavior. Not only kids, but even adults because we know that you're more likely to have, you know, an active shooter or a workplace violence incident than you are an attack on a school. On a school, you're more likely to have a suicidal kid than you are a homicidal kid. And so you talk about, you know, are we ever measured? I can tell you at Texas City, we had a pretty good process, and we knew which kids were the ones that we needed to watch, not punitively, but from, you know, just a general overview and curiosity of you know, they're exhibiting signs and symptoms of pre attack behavior, whether it be themself or on someone else. And I can tell you we were in the double digits of kids that we made contact with that wanted to hurt themselves, and we were able to get them the help that they need. Do you think that the general public in Texas City knows that? They absolutely don't. Let me put you in the hot seat for a moment, though. Okay. Uh-oh. So that was that was when you were safety and security director. Correct. And so many times we have seen gone into an organization where there might be some framework or there may have been plans that were there. And at some point, there was some type of foundational knowledge it has not been updated. It might be a decade old. Oh, yeah. And and it it doesn't take into to consideration today's current threats or how the landscape had changed around the facility or whatever because that person left. Alright. And so these were things that you were doing. And now that you're not in that position, do you think that those same things are happening? Do they still have those those knowledge? Is that outreach happening. I can one hundred percent say I don't believe so. Okay. But that's that's part of this process. Right? And I think that's where we have to get engaged with the organizations and not individuals.