Behavioral Threat Assessment Model to Enhance School Safety

Introduction

Regroup is a mass notification software platform hundreds of schools nationwide use for emergency alerting and day-to-day communications. From a technical standpoint, Regroup does everything it can to keep students and staff safe; however, we also realize that a behavioral element to violence prevention is equally as important to address. We’ve partnered with Dr. Margaret Coggins to understand the best practices for preventing targeted violence in schools.

Recently, Regroup had the opportunity to interview Dr. Coggins. Please read a recap of the interview below.

Regroup:
Welcome, Dr. Coggins.

Dr. Coggins:

Hello, and thank you so much to Regroup for hosting this webinar and for attending this afternoon. It’s an honor to be here.

Regroup:
Tell us a little about your experience with school safety initiatives.

Dr. Coggins:
I’ve spent over 30 years in federal law enforcement, and about 20 of those years were with the United States Secret Service. I worked in the intelligence division, focusing on conducting research, evaluations, and investigations to support the protection of the President of the United States. In the late 90s, the Secret Service partnered with the Department of Education to study school shootings and school violence with the idea that there might be a carryover from the work that the Secret Service had done under its protected mission to improve school safety and prevent violence in schools.

The Secret Service has been a lead player in researching and publishing operational guidelines and practices to guide school safety initiatives. The most recent work has come out of the Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center, the successor to the Behavioral Research Program I was a part of. You can find out more about their publicly available information on their website: https://www.secretservice.gov/protection/ntac.

I now have my own business as a security consultant and work with violence prevention and threat assessment investigations for a wide array of clients. A significant portion of my practice involves working and consulting with schools about behavioral threat assessment initiatives.

Regroup:
Can you give us a good idea of a behavioral threat assessment (BTA) and how it works?

Dr. Coggins:
In my experience and working with schools, there’s a broad range of understanding and familiarity with BTAs. I can certainly give you an overview of a behavioral threat assessment, but please understand that this will not make you an expert on the topic and you will need further training.

A behavioral threat assessment is a systematic process and methodology designed to:

Identify threats and risks
Assess the seriousness and potential for violence
Manage, mitigate, and prevent violence and other adverse outcomes

The methodology operates within a school’s ecosystem; it’s not a standalone tool. Instead, it is an evidence-based approach stemming from extensive research and practice.

In my experience, many schools have a threat assessment process in place, but often it is not comprehensive enough in its approach. A comprehensive threat assessment framework includes investigating concerning behaviors.

Another critical point is that a BTA is a standardized process. So, if a concerning situation arises at a school, it should be handled according to the same process in a different district.

Regroup:
Can you elaborate on what comprehensive includes?

Dr. Coggins:
I like to think about school safety as an enterprise-wide endeavor. The threat assessment has many necessary components, and if anyone is absent, you’re potentially missing a crucial part of a comprehensive program. So, school safety includes conducting vulnerability and security assessments of your school and campus. The assessment looks at the school’s physical security and the process of accessing controls. It also includes an emergency preparedness component, such as active shooter training and a school culture motivated and organized around safety and security awareness.

As important, a threat assessment plan must include a behavioral threat assessment. These aspects work together to build a safe, secure, and caring school environment.

Regroup:
A caring school environment is an interesting point. Can you tell me more about what that means?

Dr. Coggins:
A safe and caring culture requires an approach that works with other elements within school environments, such as physical security and age-appropriate social-emotional learning and academic training. So, an integrated approach is multidisciplinary. Additionally, multiple professionals and perspectives are an important component of a safe and caring school culture, such as administrators, staff, security professionals, faculty, teachers, coaches, counselors, and mental health specialists.

Safe and caring school culture also means all-in stakeholder engagement, where everyone in the school environment has a role in establishing, maintaining, and promoting a safe and secure school environment.

Regroup:
Why is a BTA so important?

Dr. Coggins:
A BTA is vital for a school to become proactive and preventive instead of reactive. The idea is to cast a wide net to identify students who may be at risk at very early behavioral stages before those behaviors escalate. It’s a way for us not to wait for an act of aggression or violence but instead intervene beforehand.

For example, if a student is usually socially engaged and suddenly displays very different behaviors, this would raise a concern. The process would provide early-stage intervention and support before the behavior escalates.

The BTA also emphasizes the relationships between students and caring and trusted adults, which are an optimal protective factor. We know from research that students with positive, protective relationships with trusted adults in their schools do much better and are at a much lower risk for violence or other adverse outcomes.

The BTA eliminates shame, stigmas, and a code of silence and encourages reporting concerning behavior as a means of caring and providing support for students in need.

Regroup:
What are the benefits of a BTA?

Dr. Coggins:
I believe the biggest benefit is that a BTA is like an insurance policy for your school. If something goes wrong, you need to say we followed best practices and had a thorough, comprehensive approach backed by guidance and literature. All information about the student was documented, investigated, and mitigated by the community. It demonstrates that the school made the right decisions. It gives a school a defensible process.

Regroup:
Why does it seem like we are hearing more about BTAs?

Dr. Coggins:
BTAs are increasingly becoming mandated in many states, so that is why we are hearing more about them. In addition, state governments now recognize that threat assessments are the standard best practices for preventing targeted violence in schools. Some state legislatures are looking at requiring schools to have threat assessment capabilities, programs, and teams.

Regroup:
What is included in a threat assessment?

Dr. Coggins:
First, the threat assessments derive from two models. One from the National Threat Assessment Center and the other called the Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines (CSTAG) from Dr. Dewey Cornell at the University of Virginia.

Both models are similar in that each evaluates key themes and risk factors and provides a structured framework for assessing the information to make sense of what we are concerned about and the risk and mitigating factors to reduce the likelihood of a violent outcome.

Regroup:
How do you know if what a school is currently doing is sufficient?

Dr. Coggins:
That’s a great question because I often hear this from clients. Most schools will say that they have a threat assessment program, but when you start to drill down and look at the details of the program’s structure, you’ll often see missing pieces. Again, this goes back to the comprehensive approach I spoke about earlier.

In these cases, I recommend a program assessment of the existing threat assessment practices to determine whether they’re sufficient.

Regroup:
How does a program assessment work?

Dr. Coggins:
When we conduct an assessment of threat assessment practices and capabilities, we look at several elements we believe are critical to a robust program. One of those pieces is the use of behavioral threat assessment teams. I see if the school has a team in place and how it’s constructed, such as who’s on the team, are there the same members of teams that come together in every case, or if they’re different team members that are pulled together depending upon the circumstances. We’ll also assess the team’s training and experience. Most of the staff in a school environment will have experience in academics in teaching and administration, but not necessarily specialized team training in threat assessment. So, we want to ensure that team members and key school personnel have been trained to conduct threat assessments.

Another key component of evaluating a program is the school’s methods for reporting concerns and the communication avenues. Among those multiple avenues should be anonymous reporting. The goal is to make it as easy as possible for stakeholders in the school community to come forward with concerns about students or peers and report what they’re concerned about, such as aggressive acts and bullying. It could even consider lower-level communications.

Regroup:
What would be an example of lower-level communication?

Dr. Coggins:
Lower-level communication could be noticeable changes in a student’s behavior or appearance, like I mentioned before, such as a good performing and socially engaged student who suddenly demonstrates behavioral changes. Possibly they are withdrawn, late to class, or missing school or homework assignments. Of course, everyone has bad days, but significant and sustained changes in the student’s behavior would be one area of concern.

Another concern would be social media communications or writings in an assignment that is concerning or out of character. Students often will report that they’re concerned about a friend because they weren’t acting right, get angry quickly, or maybe going through a breakup and not handling it well. Their friends may be aware of problems at home. These types of things may be indicators that a student needs some assessment and potentially some support.

This doesn’t mean that all lower-level indicators will escalate to violent or aggressive behavior, but they could indicate that they may need some support and assessment. But, again, a goal of a BTA is identifying behaviors early before they have an opportunity to get serious.

A BTA framework also provides a tool for classifying the seriousness of a case. For example, if something has been reported, the process will show that a team has assessed and investigated what’s happening; they’ve looked at behaviors, school records, and the student’s history and perhaps interviewed other people who may know what’s happening with this student.

Regroup:
So, what do schools do with this information?

Dr. Coggins:
Yes, so how do we know if what we’re seeing is suggestive of a concern? The BTA framework should provide a methodology or structure for identifying and classifying the seriousness of the case or situation. From that, we develop case management protocols. So, serious cases warrant more aggressive intervention, monitoring, mitigation, and support. Less serious cases may require less intervention and ongoing monitoring and case management. The idea is that in case classifications align with the case management plan.

This process needs to be formalized and documented, including forms and a database, or some way to keep the information regarding the school and the student’s record intact. The records are also a good way to track threats concerning incidents at the school over time. As I mentioned before, school culture and security awareness are all components in what we need to examine as part of a robust behavioral threat assessment program and process.

Regroup:
What are some of the more effective methods that you’ve seen for anonymous reporting?

Dr. Coggins:
Many schools have different approaches. For example, some schools use systems where there is an anonymous reporting system that works online or through a mobile device. Then these are reported to an authority that reports back to the school. Other schools may use an anonymous email request where they can report a concern anonymously. And of course, some schools still use reporting to school counselors directly.

Regroup:
From a technology standpoint, several apps provide anonymous tip reporting, such as Regroup’s tip safe feature, which offers anonymous reporting directly through the Regroup app. We’ve seen that to be very effective, especially in K12 schools. There’s also threat intelligence software, including Regroup’s, that allows you to conduct social media monitoring or social media post reporting anonymously.

Dr. Coggins:
I know there are different regulations regarding how and what schools can monitor in terms of their school’s social media. Still, we often find that other students and friends become aware of concerning social media posts and interactions, and that’s how these get reported. Again, the whole culture piece comes in where you need to create a culture in the school where it’s okay to report, and reporting is destigmatized because that’s the avenue for getting help for students in need.

Regroup:
We have a high-level question that just came in. Could there ever be a national Threat Assessment Academy comparable to the FBI Academy, which would serve education and clinicians and be considered an elite training school in the threat assessment field?

Dr. Coggins:
Yes, there could be. Currently, the Secret Service has made it part of its mission to conduct training around everything we’re discussing for schools. I know that many law enforcement organizations do the same thing. The limitation of that training is the length of training. Usually, it’s just a couple of hours, not a certification program. As you might imagine, when we start talking about threat assessment and categorizing risk and case management, these are complex issues, so it’s not easily teachable in a two-hour session.

I love this question because we’re trying to get to a basic standardized, recognized methodology and process for doing this rather than everybody doing their own thing and calling it a threat assessment. We want to ensure the process’s integrity and that we identify kids at risk and provide support to prevent bad outcomes.

Regroup:
What’s involved in a behavioral threat assessment program?

Dr. Coggins:
A BTA has three elements. First, we take the information we have reported and understand the who, what, where, and why. We want to investigate the information along a systematic framework and investigative themes that we know to be relevant factors related to risk and risk potential.

Next, we assess the information or triggers we are concerned about and determine if it is a risk and the severity of the risk. For example, although not good, bullying and verbal intimidation are different from a risk involving a plot or violence against a school. Different kinds of risk carry different types of risk potential, severity, and concern.

Finally, we need to investigate the capability of the individual to do what they say they want to do. We can have an explicit threat, but it doesn’t mean the person is working toward making it happen. So, we look at motivation. Why do they want to harm somebody else? What are they motivated to do? Why do they see violence as a means to solve their problems?

Dewey Cornell’s CSTAG model emphasizes intent as part of the assessment piece. Intent helps us understand how concerned we need to be. Upon that determination, then, we want to manage the case. We want to intervene, provide support, and monitor the situation for some time until we’re comfortable as an entire school community that the risk has gone down. Unfortunately, the risk goes up in some cases, and we need to take additional actions to prevent and ensure safety.

Regroup:
You spoke about the school community. Can you expand on that idea?

Dr. Coggins:
Creating a safe, respectful, and supportive climate is critical to ensuring that information comes forward. Often, there’s a code of silence in schools where students don’t want to report out of fear of snitching, getting somebody in trouble, or disciplinary action. We need to reframe this. We also need to reframe that for our parents because often, parents don’t know what a threat assessment is, so they have concerns about their child undergoing a threat assessment. They are also concerned about reporting concerns and how they affect their kids and friends. So, we need to create a culture that encourages reporting concerns to provide help.

Empowering students to share concerns, confide in adults, and build positive, trusting relationships with students is critical. But, again, a threat assessment is part of a school’s ecosystem; it doesn’t operate or exist in a vacuum.

Regroup:
What other things do schools need to consider when creating a BTA?

Dr. Coggins:
A school should create multidisciplinary teams that are involved in the reporting process. Typically, we want an administrator, mental health or wellness person, counselor, and possibly a security professional. The idea is to have different perspectives and a team that works collaboratively.

We don’t want one individual to bear the responsibility of making a threat assessment or a risk classification decision. Instead, we want the team to weigh in and come to an agreement about what makes the most sense in a particular circumstance. This is high-risk work. It’s high-stakes and stressful work, so it should be a shared responsibility. We also want team members to have specialized training in threat assessment in addition to their professional training in their respective fields.

Regroup:
Should we bring in anyone from the law enforcement community?

Dr. Coggins:
I’m a big fan that your BTA program should have a strong liaison with local law enforcement. However, sometimes law enforcement officers are very savvy about BTAs, and sometimes this is a foreign concept to them, so make sure they are on the same page in terms of thinking about the goals and objectives of the BTA beforehand.

Regroup:
What common triggers should we notice in a student that could pose a threat?

Dr. Coggins:
The most common trigger is when a student poses a threat to harm others. Notice I used the word “pose”, so this doesn’t necessarily mean that they made a threat, stated a threat, or wrote a threat. But, by virtue of the behavior, we’re seeing and hearing in their actions that we should be concerned that they may pose a threat.

Other triggers may be if a student poses a risk for self-harm or to others or demonstrates concerning behaviors. It’s good to remember that the wider the net we cast, the better we’re going to be able to prevent and deescalate a situation.

Regroup:
How do you know if a trigger shows the potential of becoming a threat?

Dr. Coggins:
The next step after we identify the triggers is to investigate them further. We’ve discussed the systematic investigative process and specific risk factors. But first, in every situation where a threat assessment is conducted, we need to understand the motivation. Here are some questions to consider:

• Is there a grievance, or have there been concerning unusual or threatening communications?
• Is there an inappropriate interest in weapons, school shooters, mass attacks, or other types of violence?
• Does the student have access to weapons?
• Does the student have the capacity to plan and take action?
• Is the student expressing desperation, hopelessness, or suicidal thoughts?
• Does the student see violence as an acceptable means to solve problems?

There are many more reasons we can investigate, and we must look at each and every one of these.

Regroup:
As you mentioned, once you identify the risk, you need to categorize it. Can you explain this model further?

Dr. Coggins:
One way you can categorize a trigger is to create a model that shows the severity of it. There is no one model to use, but one example is the Homeland Security advisory system, with a green, yellow, and red color code..

A model provides a way for the team to substantiate, justify, or defend the level of concern of the information you’ve investigated and assessed. The system should determine the seriousness and convey cautionary actions to mitigate the risk (your case management plan).

Regroup:
What are some effective strategies to manage these situations?

Dr. Coggins:
The strategies should be individualized to the student in the situation. The goal is to provide support, develop coping skills, and management of stressors and life events. You should also stay connected to the student to monitor and track if the situation is improving or escalating.

Clearly, a case management strategy involves protecting the safety of potential targets and victims. As I mentioned, there should be a liaison with law enforcement, mental health, and other resources as appropriate for the individual case, and we need to document what we’re doing.

A student’s plan should have a follow-up timeline and the intervention that will be conducted. The case should also be reassessed as life events and stressors change. In addition, members of the team, staff, or faculty should be accountable for ensuring that what was planned did take place, and this is documented.
About Dr. Margaret Coggins

Dr. Margaret Coggins has over 30 years of specialized experience in the prevention of targeted violence, threat assessment, behavioral analysis, and change management. She is a subject matter expert in workplace violence prevention programs; school and campus safety; insider threat and fraud prevention models; and protective intelligence investigations. As a psychologist, Dr. Coggins’s approach emphasizes proactive prevention and intervention strategies to mitigate risk. She routinely consults on best practices for program design and implementation, policy development, communications strategies, and training to achieve safety and security objectives. She also advises in support of Federal law. To find out more about Dr. Coggins, please visit her website at: https://www.mhcoggins.com/.

About Regroup Mass Notification
Since 2006, Regroup Mass Notification has provided a robust and reliable mass alert platform trusted by healthcare, enterprise, higher education and more. Regroup empowers more effective communication, keeping people safe and informed at all times. The company’s award-winning, cloud-based mass communication platform is what clients around the globe rely on to send both emergency and day-to-day communications to millions of people.
With simplified messaging to mobile devices, landlines, social media, email, websites and more, Regroup helps organizations keep people safe during critical events and helps strengthen operational resilience every day. Learn more about Regroup at www.regroup.com or contact the company at inquiries@regroup.com.

 

 

 

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