NEW Blog on Threat Assessment, Violence Prevention, and Safety

We started a new blog on threat assessment, violence prevention, and simple safety strategies.  This blog is a product of our new partnership, SIGMA Threat Management Associates (check out our new website!).  We will be using our new blog to post the latest on threat assessment, current event analysis, and common sense safety tips.  We will post links to these new posts here...and more information can be found on our new Facebook page.  Let us know what you think!

Cyberbullying gets Punished

Kudos for Nevada: A new Nevada law -- which takes effect today -- makes it a crime for students through 12th grade to bully someone through electronic means - including by cellphone texts or email. Most of the enforcement of the law will occur through school discipline, although it gives police and prosecutors in Nevada a new tool to address the problem with stronger penalties beyond school punishment. The law's sponsors, state Senator Valerie Wiener and Assemblywoman Bonnie Parnell, introduced this legislation in part to prevent tragedies like the one of Brandon Myers, a fifth grader in Missouri who committed suicide after being the victim of continual bullying and cyberbullying. Nevada's new law underscores that bullying is NOT "just kids being kids" - and recognizes that even when bullying occurs remotely (e.g., by email or texting), it can have tragic consequences. Nevada lawmakers should be commended for taking a proactive approach to prevent bullying and violence among students.

Back to blogging....finally!

Before getting back to some substantive blogging, I want to apologize for my prolonged absence. As some of you know, I was involved in a political campaign for the past 15 months and barely had enough hours in the day to continue to run my company and handle my current case consultations (which continue to increase....is the still-bad economy to blame for more people threatening?), and then added campaign-related work - including some significant security concerns -- on top of it all. Now that the campaign is over, I am happy to report that I am back to blogging and can also say that I learned quite a lot along the way. I'll share some of that in the next few posts. So thank you for your patience. I look forward to sharing more thoughts on threat assessment and of course to hearing from you.

This Week In Threat Assessment

There have been several threat assessment and targeted violence items in the news this week. In case you missed them, here are some of the highlights:

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security reported this week that to date, more than 30 U.S. governors have received warning or threat letters from an extremist group, telling the governors to step down or they would "be removed." The extremist group, who call themselves the Guardians of the Free Republic, has information posted on its website about its goals and intended course of action, including complaints about the IRS and taxes. The letters have prompted more security at various capitol buildings around the country, including in Nevada's capitol, Carson City. Although the reason for the added security is unfortunate, I am in favor of these capitol buildings enhancing their security. It is something our public officials most certainly deserve - and these days seem to need.

In other news, an associate professor at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania returned to campus and to teaching this week, after having been suspended for posting statements on Facebook about wanting to kill students. The professor, Gloria Gadsden, claimed the statements were intended as jokes and were meant only to amuse her family and friends. She was cleared by a psychologist before being allowed to return to teaching. According to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, several students became angry and stormed out of her classroom when they saw that Gadsden had returned. Gadsden says she regrets ever joining Facebook, as well as the statements she posted.

And in California, a Humboldt County superior court clerk was arrested after she threatened to bring a gun to the courthouse and start shooting people, including Judge Timothy Cissna. The clerk, Shirley Rosa, is 51 and has been on medical leave from her job at the courthouse since October. She allegedly made the threats to a co-worker last week, and was arrested a few hours later without incident.

Trying Kids as Adults?

I came across an interesting opinion piece on CNN.com today. It provides some compelling arguments on the merits of trying minors in juvenile court rather than adult court, even for serious offenses. This is a tough issue - and certainly can be an emotional one - centered as it often does around the notions of culpability, retribution, and ultimately the possibility for rehabilitation. If we don't think serious juvenile offenders can be rehabilitated, then they might as well be tried and sentenced as adults - or so the argument goes.

One interesting bit of data that my colleagues and I uncovered when we studied school shootings and interviewed school shooters around the US was that many of those who carried out school shootings in the 1970s and 1980s were tried and sentenced as juveniles, whereas most of those who carried out school shootings since the 1990s have been tried and sentenced as adults. There was one school shooter who declined our request to interview him because he served his time as a juvenile and was released at age 21, the records of his case were expunged, and he has since gone on to become a husband, father, and prominent member of his community. I recognize this is only one example - but it certainly underscores the possibility for rehabilitation in at least some cases. The opinion piece by Robert Schwartz, co-founder of the Juvenile Law Center, lays out far more compelling arguments, including the latest findings from child and adolescent brain development that provide strong evidence that juveniles cannot reason the same way adults do. Just some food for thought.

Alabama Shooting: New Developments

If you've blinked in the past few days, you may have missed some of the odd developments and twists in the investigation into Dr. Amy Bishop's rampage shooting at the University of Alabama at Huntsville. For a good overview of the shooting incident, I recommend Scott Jaschik's article in Inside Higher Ed, in Sunday's edition of USAToday. Jaschik provides a great review of the shooting, where Bishop allegedly killed three fellow professors and wounded two others and a staff member, all from the University of Alabama Biology Department where Bishop worked. Although Bishop's motives for opening fire on a staff meeting remain unknown, various colleagues and others have speculated that the shooting might be related to Bishop initially being denied tenure, successfully appealing her case, and then having her appeal overruled by the university's administration.

But wait, there's more. In recent days it has become evident that Bishop had engaged in seriously troubling behavior - and in some cases criminal or potentially criminal behavior - over a period of several years. Since Sunday, several significant details about Amy Bishop's life and examples of her previous concerning behavior have emerged at an impressive rate. An article in today's New York Times provides a good summary of the recent developments, including the following:

• In 1986, Bishop (then aged 20) shot and killed her brother, Seth Bishop (then 18) at their family home. The shooting was eventually ruled an accident, although recent news reports suggest differing recollections by those involved in the investigation as to why it was ruled an accident. Today, FoxNews.com went so far as to question whether Congressman William Delahunt (D-MA) may have been involved in getting Bishop released to her parents and the shooting ruled an accident when Delahunt was the local District Attorney and Bishop's mother was on the school board.
• In 1993, Bishop and her husband, James Anderson, were both questioned in the investigation into an anonymous pipe bomb that was sent to the home of Dr. Paul Rosenberg, one of Bishop's colleagues at Children's Hospital in Boston. Colleagues recalled that Bishop was worried she was going to get a negative job performance review from Rosenberg. According to a recent interview with James Anderson, he said both he and Bishop were eventually cleared in the investigation.
  
• In 2002, according to today's Associated Press article, Amy Bishop was arrested and charged with assault for punching a woman in an International House of Pancakes (IHOP) restaurant. According to the AP article, Bishop reportedly became irate when she discovered the other woman got the restaurant's last booster seat and repeatedly yelled "I am Dr. Amy Bishop!" Bishop was sentenced to probation for the assault.
  
• An article on abcnews.com reports that in recent interviews with Bishop and Anderson's neighbors, several described Bishop as a woman who often got into "nose-to-nose" confrontations and arguments with neighbors over such benign issues as allowing an ice cream truck to sell ice cream to children in the neighborhood.
• And in an interview this weekend, Bishop's husband said that Bishop recently went to a firing range with a handgun that she had borrowed from a friend, although Anderson had forbidden Bishop from keeping the gun in the house. Anderson described Bishop as being "cagey" about exactly where she got the gun.

As with other shooting rampages, the full accounting of the incident is likely months away. Expect more details to emerge in the coming days and weeks.

Professor Held in Campus Rampage Shooting

It happened again today - another rampage shooting on a college campus. But this time it appears to be a female professor who carried out the attack.

The most recent story in The New York Times offers several details of the shooting - which took place at the University of Alabama at Hunstville -- that make this incident sound similar to other campus and workplace shootings. According to the Times article and to the latest update on abcnews.com, the alleged shooter was Dr. Amy Bishop, a biology professor at the University of Alabama at Hunstville. Dr. Bishop had previously been denied tenure, appealed the tenure decision, and learned earlier today that her appeal has also been denied. One colleague noted that Dr. Bishop had recently talked intensely about her grievances about the tenure process.

The most recent news reports list three killed and another three injured in the attack. The three individuals killed were all fellow biology professors, including the chair of the biology department. The three individuals injured included two other biology professors and a professor's assistant in the department. No students were injured or killed.

Since the Virginia Tech attack in April 2007, more and more colleges and universities have developed campus threat assessment teams to identify persons on campus that may pose some harm and to intervene before harm can occur. Yet many of these institutions remain concerned only about threats from students. The shooting at the University of Alabama reminds us that threats can come from campus employees as well as from students - and that colleges and universities are workplaces as well as learning institutions. Fortunately the principles of campus threat assessment can be used just as well to identify and reduce potential harm from faculty and staff, as they can be to address the same concerns from students.

For more information on campus threat assessment, please see The Handbook for Campus Threat Assessment and Management Teams, available on Amazon.com and here.

Dogs Help Struggling Youth

And now for some good news: A program for troubled youth and several animal rescue agencies have teamed up to help each other. Best Friends, the nationally-known animal refuge in Utah, featured an article in their newsletter this week about a program in Chicago that was having a positive impact on "throw-away" teens - kids who had been convicted of some illegal activity and sentenced to a juvenile facility and who had little family involvement while in the residential facility. This program involved these teens with rescue dogs who were up for adoption. The program gradually introduces the teens to the dogs and to basic dog training techniques. The kids enjoyed working with the dogs so much -and the dogs responded to the training so well - that the first round of dogs were all adopted soon after training was over. The program has continued with both general and advanced training available for kids interested in the program. By all accounts, those kids who have participated have benefited too - deriving satisfaction and a sense of self-worth from doing things that helped the dogs get adopted, and from simply bonding with the dogs as well. Amid all the rampage shooting stories in the first few weeks of 2010, this story is a welcome change.

Threats to Judges - A Nationwide Review

In the wake of this week's shooting at a federal courthouse in Las Vegas, the U.S. Marshals Service - which is responsible in part for protection of federal judges and courts - will conduct a nationwide review of courthouse security. The review is timely - not only because of this week's courthouse shooting -- but because the U.S. Department of Justice just released a report showing that the number of threats to federal judges and prosecutors have more than doubled in the past six years. The report also concluded that there were a number of deficiencies in the way the U.S. Marshals Service currently handles threats to judges and prosecutors.

It was only a few years ago that the U.S. Marshals Service was advised by the U.S. Department of Justice to stop using an automated software program to evaluate threats to judges and instead to develop and implement a behavioral threat assessment process. Given the rise in threats to federal judges and prosecutors, it is good the Marshals had already started to move toward implementing a threat assessment process. Those familiar with the Darren Mack case (Mack killed his ex-wife and shot the judge who oversaw their divorce), for example, may recall that Mack engaged in several typical warning signs - including threatening communications to the judge - that could have been detected in a threat assessment case.

For more information on evaluating threats to judges - and a great case study of a U.S. Supreme Court threat - click here see our chapter on preventing violence to judicial officials and courts. This chapter originally appeared in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences.

St. Louis Shooting at ABB Plant

It happened again - just three days after the courthouse shooting in Las Vegas. This time it was a disgruntled 51-year old employee who had been in an ongoing legal dispute with his employer - ABB Group - over his pension. The employee, Timothy Hendron, killed four before killing himself inside the plant. According to the latest news reports, Hendron and other employees filed a lawsuit against ABB Group, a Swiss company, in 2006 for undisclosed and unreasonable fees related to their pensions. Apparently Hendron had recently told neighbors and friends that he felt he was being retaliated against at work because of the lawsuit.

As with other targeted shootings, it will be interesting to see what warning signs or clues may have preceded this attack. Did Hendron's behavior raise concerns among his co-workers or supervisors? Did he talk about wanting to do harm to anyone at ABB? Were there Internet postings about his grievances toward ABB? Did anyone know that Hendron was suicidal?

In these tough economic times especially, these shootings are no longer a surprise. But they are not inevitable. Businesses can get training for their supervisors in behavioral threat assessment - or get help from outside consultants - to be able to look into reports about troubling behavior, threats, grievances, or other concerns in the workplace - and ultimately to be able to help employees who may be struggling.