An updated guide to threat and risk assessment approaches for security professionals, this guide is meant to define, provide resources, and help you identify threat assessment training and resources that might help you and your personnel.

Lethal and non-lethal violent acts on school property are becoming more and more common, ranging from the most horrific shooting events to schoolyard fights. In this post, we will describe school threat assessment and the challenges associated with school safety. Also included are resources on critical topics. Lastly, we describe how active threat assessment and situational awareness training can help school personnel prevent violence.

The type of threat assessment you need may vary based on the type of problem you are trying to solve. In this post, we share various research and resources related to threat assessment training and our own active threat assessment methodology.

Active threat assessment is an observation methodology that can help you identify threatening individuals or groups who require immediate attention while dismissing people who don’t present a true threat. This method involves systematic observations, recognizing people who deviate from the pattern of consistent behavior, and identifying persons of interest (POI) who warrant further investigation. This methodology can also help you assess threat indicators, which can help you conduct safe and effective interdictions with POIs when necessary.

As the prevalence of active shooter incidents continues to increase, the need for active shooter prevention and preparedness is becoming more relevant. There are a number of things that organizations can do to prepare for and respond to these types of incidents. Some are proactive and focus on active shooter prevention, while others are short-term and help officers better respond to these incidents. For example, threat assessment can be used to identify different threats that come up at different points in time. In this post, we explain some of these options and help you find resources that might help you.

Recently, a Second Sight trainee used the active threat assessment techniques to spot people carrying concealed weapons at a peaceful protest. Read this story.

Training is more than just a lecture and watching someone complete a task. We should train in ways that allow us to practice our skills. Good training should also assess whether or not we can successfully execute these skills. This is where evaluation comes in.

Online training is not a panacea. It is not a replacement for instructor-led training. But there are distinct benefits, and downsides, to each type of training delivery.

We all know that some trainings are required and “buts in seats” may be the only thing that matters. In other cases, you may want to makes sure your officers learned something. This is why we evaluate. The second level of training evaluation is learning – assessing measurable skills that a trainee takes away from a course.   

Assessing patterns of consistent behavior is the key to threat identification and assessment. Learn about assessing patterns of consistent behavior, or the behavioral baseline, and how this leads to active threat assessment.

Learn about the origin of active threat assessment for law enforcement through the Just Doesn’t Look Right Project and the Identifying Threats Training Program.

Learn more about why timing of observations matter and how active threats respond to your officers in our most recent blog post.

Your officers have a “lingo” they use when communicating. This lingo, vocabulary, or glossary of terms allows them to quickly and efficiently talk to one another. Without this threat assessment vocabulary, it will take them longer to transmit information, give and receive orders, and may result in miscommunication.