Can threat assessment help police prevent mass public shootings? Testing an intelligence-led policing tool

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine whether threat assessment, an intelligence-led policing (ILP) tool, can prevent mass public shootings. Design/methodology/approach In order to gauge the potential effectiveness of this ILP tool, the authors conduct a retrospective analysis of 278 mass public shootings that occurred in the USA between 1966 and 2016. This retrospective analysis allows us to determine how successful threat assessment protocols could be in preventing mass public shootings by examining how successful this tool would have been in identifying the offenders in our data. Findings The results show that threat assessment has the potential to be an effective tool in the ILP arsenal to identify and prevent impending mass public shootings. However, our results also point to several obstacles for the effective implementation of this ILP tool. The underreporting of threats and using the content of threats and characteristics of threateners are problematic in correctly assigning risk. The authors make suggestions for how to overcome these obstacles. Originality/value This study makes several contributions to the intelligence-led policing and mass murder field. This is the first study to test the potential effectiveness of an intelligence-led policing tool to prevent mass public shootings. Additionally, this is one of the first studies to examine the leaks, types, context and follow-though of threats made by mass public shooters in the United States. Consequently, it provides unique information on the foreshowing behaviors of mass public shooters.

Disaggregating Mass Public Shootings: A Comparative Analysis of Disgruntled Employee, School, Ideologically motivated, and Rampage Shooters

“…One promising prevention strategy is threat assessment . Threat assessment is the process of identifying, assessing, and managing the threat that certain persons may pose .…”

“…One promising prevention strategy is threat assessment . Threat assessment is the process of identifying, assessing, and managing the threat that certain persons may pose . As conceptualized by the Secret Service , threat assessment is predicated on communication from potential offenders that may signal an impending violent act.…”

“…Another potential roadblock to the success of threat assessment is the reporting of threats. Research suggests that an important determinant of reporting of crimes and threats is the bystander's relationship with the offender . This literature finds that threats and crimes made in the presence of friends and family are less likely to be reported to the authorities .…”

Contextualising mass school shootings in the United States

“…The situational clusters unique to mass school shootings suggest several policy opportunities to disrupt the shooter's planning or execution of the shooting. One promising prevention strategy is a threat assessment, given that mass school shooters tend to be students of the schools they target (see Capellan & Lewandowski, 2019).…”

Analyzing person‐exposure patterns in lone‐actor terrorism

“…Post 9/11, counterterrorism policing has evolved toward an intelligence‐led model of policing (ILP). Threat assessment, defined as “the application of the collection and analysis of information related to crime,” is a key principle of ILP (Capellan & Lewandowski, , p.17). The lone‐actor terrorist population can be extremely heterogeneous and a challenge for law enforcement to detect, and so a framework for guiding the threat assessment of these offenders may serve as a beneficial tool for ILP.…”