Threat Assessment, Why We Need It

Introduction

Not long after California passed basically the first anti-stalking law in the world January of 1991, 646.9 CPC, John Lane, then a lieutenant for the Los Angeles Police Department developed along with some associates LAPD’s TMU (Threat Management Unit). As far as I know it was the first unit designed at least initially to handle high profile type stalking as well as other threat cases that popped up in L.A. County; especially in the celebrity arena.

I first met John on an America’s Most Wanted special on stalking that was being produced in the Washington D.C. area. I was a Westminster Police (Orange County) homicide detective that had investigated and assisted in one of the first successful prosecutions of a violent stalker under the new California Stalking law, and was profiling him on this particular show. By that time, I had been on 20/20 and other media presentations due to stalking being such a hot topic.

Not long after our liaison, our department decided to formulate the FPU (Family Protection Unit) that was tasked with handling sex crimes, domestic violence, and stalking all under one construct. The FPU was similar in some ways to the TMU, but did not have the greater resources that Lt. Lane eventually had at his disposal.

John was an innovator, and it did not take him long to find out that what law enforcement actually needed was to become much more adept at what became known as Threat Assessment.  John then set off to develop an association known as ATAP (Association of Threat Assessment Professionals). This organization first started out with trying to get as many folks on board about stalking, but soon moved to trying to identify any type of threatening behavior. ATAP has since moved to being primarily directed towards law enforcement towards the vast inclusion of psychologist, health care and other academic professionals who can benefit from an outward thinking view of how to both identify and stop potential threats before they erupt into violence. ATAP has now become a well-respected international organization with several hundred members hoping to thwart the various threats that a person or organization may encounter.

When I regularly continue to train law enforcement and others concerning the issue of stalking, we also get into the nuts and bolts of threat assessment and the benefits it represents. Keep in mind, that even though I have a college degree with a few minors, and three teaching credentials, I am not a psychologist, nor do I have a PhD behind my name, so I make it a point of trying to make everything I talk about as simple to understand as possible; as it should be, because in my humble opinion threat assessment should be easy to understand, and therefore, simple to utilize.

It is my opinion that no matter the size of your agency, you should have at least one detective trained in threat assessment. Each agency should at the very least conduct some type of at the very least basic training explaining to each officer or deputy what threat assessment is, and how it can benefit their overall effectiveness of their department.

I suggest the following implementation of a policy when I instruct.

1.     Whenever an officer is contacted in the field or while being tasked as a desk officer; whenever a citizen makes contact and tries to report that in their opinion a subject appears to be acting strangely or is in their mind acting out, but on the face of this information does not reach the level of an actual crime being committed. The officer or deputy should not immediately downplay the citizen contact, and send them on their way telling them what they have explained is not a crime; therefore, there is nothing they can do. [I hear this way too often from those who have contacted me, explaining how law enforcement has handled them.] Instead, the officer can either fill out a short report, or make a computer data entry with as much information as he or she can obtain, and forward it to the detective tasked with reviewing potential threats or unusual behavior.

2.     When the threat assessment detective gets this information, he or she can then start a file on this subject. Oftentimes, because there is one centralized clearing house so to speak for the information to go to, one would be surprised at how much data starts to stream in about a subject. [Citizen observations, police field contacts, school administrators, etc.]

3.     If the detective starts to see a pattern of behavior that seems disconcerting, then he or she can make contact with the individual in question, or perhaps conduct some type of surveillance. The contact does two things, help to evaluator to generate a clearer picture of the person of interest, and puts that individual on notice that law enforcement may be interested in what he or she is up to.

4.     I also suggest that patrol officers be asked to go to their local high school campuses, and merely try and sit down with kids on their lunch breaks, and maybe eat with them. Also to just get out of their patrol units and wander the campus talking to kids, and handing out their business cards. At first, there maybe some pushback, but you would be surprised at how much valuable information you can obtain by doing this. My partner and I would do this all the time, and would get kids calling us about all kinds of crime and other issues, because we had developed a relationship with. Try and remember that when someone sees a cop driving around in a unit, that is what they see, a no-name person cruising down the road. Get out and talk to folks.  By the way, we also suggest that teachers do the same; instead of staying in their prep period, they get out and mingle. The same with administrators. Kids will talk to those they know and trust over some authority figure they don’t have any relationship with.

With a viable threat assessment program on board, it is mine and others hope we can hopefully stop as many of the people we encounter from going off the rails.

In short, law enforcement has to become as proactive as they are reactive. Especially in this day and age.