NFPA Journal - Spring 2023 - 10

Dispatches
employment, and legal issues, and in some cases,
attackers had a specific triggering event prior
to carrying out the attack. Each of these was
highlighted as factors for authorities and other
community groups to be aware of when assessing
the potential for violence.
What is less clear-cut in the report is what
Common
Denominators
" Mass Attacks in Public Spaces:
2016-2020, " a new report from
the US Secret Service's National
Threat Assessment Center,
looked at 173 mass shooting
attacks to identify patterns
about the shooters that could
inform future prevention efforts.
Here were some of the findings:
The attacks analyzed
happened across 37 states
and Washington, D.C.
51% took place in businesses,
including restaurants and retail,
the most common locations for
an attack.
73% of attacks involved the use
of one or more firearms.
96% of the attackers in the
study were male; 57% were
white and 34% were black.
64% of attacks had a prior criminal
history, not including minor
traffic violations.
41% of the attackers had a
history of domestic violence.
20% of the attackers experienced
a childhood trauma.
exactly communities, businesses, and others are
supposed to do with this information-a point
that many experts describe as
the crux of the issue.
According to Otto Drozd, sorting
out those specifics is hugely
challenging but will be crucial
if widespread use of behavioral
threat assessment strategies are
to succeed on the community
level. Drozd, executive secretary
of the Metro Chiefs, a section of
NFPA that includes fire chiefs
from the largest departments in
the country and internationally,
has witnessed the effects of
mass violence up close; he was
the fire chief in Orange County,
Florida, during the 2016 Pulse
nightclub shooting in Orlando
that left 49 people dead and
wounded 53 others. " In my conversations
about mass shooting
prevention, the main question
that comes up is, 'What's the
go, and no go, on this information?' "
said Drozd. " You can
have all these markers, but
where is the point where you
determine that this is a viable
threat? And after you determine
that, what do you do next? Even
police are hesitant to act if no
crime has been committed.
These are the difficult parts that
are not well defined. "
Recent history is filled with
63% of attackers had an online
presence uploading or creating
content, and 23% displayed
" concerning behavior " such as
making threats online.
93% of attackers experienced
" at least one significant
stressor " within five years of
the attack, most of which
were issues with family and
romantic relationships.
examples of how difficult it can
be in practice to prevent realworld
violence, even with the
presence of multiple warning
signs. Many of the perpetrators
of some of the highest-profile
shootings in recent years were
already known to authorities
and exhibited alarming red flags
well before they starting shooting.
That group includes Omar
Mateen, the Pulse nightclub
10 | NFPA JOURNAL * SPRING 2022
shooter, who was allowed to buy a gun legally even
after he was interviewed three times by the FBI
and put on a watchlist prior to the shooting. It also
includes the teen shooter who pleaded guilty to
killing 10 people in a shooting in Buffalo last year, as
well as the gunman who killed 17 students in 2018
at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,
Florida.
The NTAC report takes great pains to point out
that none of the warning signs it describes are
sure-fire indicators that someone is planning a
mass shooting. " Many of the preattack behaviors
described in this report are not suspicious on their
own, and some involve constitutionally protected
activity, " the report says. " Most individuals who
exhibit these types of behaviors will not commit
acts of targeted violence. NTAC's research continues
to affirm that there is no profile for the type of
person who will commit an attack. "
Instead of a straightforward cause and effect,
the Secret Service itself " does not utilize profiles "
but focuses instead " on identifying and assessing
threatening and concerning behavior in context,
and identifying the most appropriate strategies for
reducing any risk of violence, while also maintaining
individual civil and constitutional rights. "
In other words, behavioral threat assessment
seems very much an art rather than a science,
even for the most well-trained and experienced
officials in the world.
They key will be ramping up training for law
enforcement and other community groups to
" look at individuals holistically " when they start
displaying warning signs like those laid out in the
NTAC report, John Cohen, a former US Department
of Homeland Security acting undersecretary
for intelligence, told ABC News.
" We're not dealing with a group of sophisticated,
ideologically motivated foreign terrorists.
We're dealing with individuals, all of which,
regardless of the motive, are experiencing somewhat
consistent behavioral health issues, " he said.
" I acknowledge that it requires additional training,
it requires resources, it requires a different
way of looking at these issues. But the alternative
is we continue to experience the weekly shootings
or other mass casualty attacks that we seem to be
experiencing today. "
The NFPA 3000 angle
The difficult nuances involved in assessing the
behavior and intentions of potential mass shooters
is one of the reasons that prevention was
left out of the scope of NFPA 3000, said Drozd,
who was the standard's first technical committee
chair. Another reason is that crime prevention in
NFPA Journal - Spring 2023

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