Daniel Garrabrant
The 18th Annual Stephen D. Doyle Criminal Justice Symposium held this month focused on school shooters: mindset, prevention and response. Daniel Garrabrant, special agent for the FBI, and Scott Torre, director of campus safety at Saint Peter’s University, spoke.
Garrabrant’s two presentations included “The Pathway to Violence” and “Behavioral Threat Assessment-Making Prevention a Reality,” which both focused on identifying potential safety concerns. His research focuses on how to prevent people from choosing violence and how to identify those who have decided that targeted violence is the answer to their problems.
“If we understand the pathway from a cranky kid with a bad attitude to ‘I need to kill people to feel better,’ we can prevent it,” Garrabrant stated.
The strategy to identifying theses killers is based on behaviors instead of demographics. A behavioral pattern leads to the event (which has been planned for a long time to make sure it goes right). Garrabrant is working on recognizing this pattern before the event happens. According to Garrabrant, the pathway to violence includes grievance, ideation, research and planning, preparation, breach and attack.
“Most active shooters are not severely mentally ill, most function beside us daily,” said Garrabrant. “We are working on identifying those who are a risk. You can help by recognizing and reporting the behavior.”
Garrabrant concluded his presentation by giving real life case examples.
Scott Torre
Torre explained the University’s strategy for dealing with an incident and reiterated the stages of an attack. He also explained that the RAVE emergency notification the University uses is extremely helpful in emergencies because it can send out messages quickly.
Torre shared survival strategies, “Make instinctual decisions, barricade the doors, silence cell phones and turn the lights off. Work with your peers to develop a strategy if the attacker does come through the door. When you leave the building, make sure to hold your hands up to show you are not a threat and never pick up the gun.”
Lastly, Torre added, “Criminals are opportunists. If you make it hard for them to get to you they will move on because they want to get to as many people as fast as possible.”
Both Torre and Garrabrant stressed that even though active shooter situations are growing, they are still highly unlikely, but when they happen, they cause waves and get a lot of attention.