Hunters & Howlers & The Pathway to Intended Violence with Frederick S. Calhoun, PhD

In this podcast we talk with one of the genuine legends of the Threat Assessment industry. Frederick is one of the co-authors behind some of the key elements of assessing threats used by every recognised individual and organisation globally. From the concept know as ‘Hunters & Howlers’ which differentiates those who pose threats from those that seek to frighten, to the ‘Pathway to Intended Violence’ a simple model that beautifully illustrates how everyone from a lone actor terrorist to a fixated individual and even nation states escalate towards violence, Frederick shares his decades of wisdom and introduces his lates research ‘Imagining the Unimageable’.

Frederick S. Calhoun, PhD, oversaw a national workplace violence prevention program for a large federal agency. He earned his PhD from the University of Chicago. He was the lead researcher and principal architect in developing the threat assessment process used by the United States Marshals Service for analyzing risks to federal judicial officials. He also developed the service’s policies and procedures for conducting protective investigations and wrote the curriculum and led the training of deputy US Marshals Service threat investigators and their supervisors. He is the author of 12 books and teaches a periodic two-day seminar, "Managing Threats: Reducing the Risk of Violence," designed to train law enforcement officers, mental health professionals, and private security officials to identify, assess, and manage individuals of violent intent.

Transcript

Philip Grindell: 0:03

Hello, and welcome to another edition of the online bodyguard. My name is Philip Rendell, as you know, and I'm here today have the huge pleasure of speaking with Frederick Calhoun. So for those of you who that know me, and those of you that have seen me present or have heard me or read anything on LinkedIn, you'll know that one of the things I talk about is this concept of hunters and howlers. Well, Frederick is one of the co authors of that piece of research. And so today is this is a huge privilege for me, because there's so much in his research that I think underpins a lot of what I believe in and what I try and do. And I think so much of what he and his colleagues have done and researched, really advances the subject of how to assess threats. So, Frederick, thank you so much for being a guest. It's a huge privilege to have you on. For those of you for those people who are not familiar with you, or how would you describe what you do and what your work involves?

Unknown: 1:09

My background is a bit eclectic. And I have a PhD in American history from the University of Chicago. And I was hired by the United States Marshal Service, to write the first history of the marshals in time for their bicentennial in 1989, which I did, in 1989, came around and I woke up and thought, wow, did I just write myself out of a job when suddenly Walter moody sent a mail bomb to Judge Robert Vance, who was on the US Court of Appeals for the 11th circuit in Alabama. And the bomb killed the judge. The result of that, as the Marshal Service had to put protective details around 30 some odd judges that were associated with the 11th circuit. And I realised that nobody had ever really looked at the threats to the judiciary in the United States. And so as a researcher and writer, as an historian, I started doing that research to try and get a grip on why this occurred. One federal judge had been killed prior to 1970. From 1970 On three federal judges were killed up to 89. And so I was wondering, why albums, why there's difference between the two centuries. During the course of the research, I came across a file cabinet at the Marshal Service warehouse that had 3000 files on individual incidents where a Federal Judicial official, a judge, or a US attorney, or a US attorney, or clerk, had been threatened or even attacked. And I was able to transfer all that information into a database that I intended to use for my own purposes as writing my book. But I realised once I had the database complete that I knew the outcome of each of these 3000 Plus incidents. And so I could assign kind of what put them in categories. And so I came up with specious as one which was empty, the US attorney might receive a death threat, and then nothing else happens. And the attorney is still alive. So those were empty threats. I then counted, some is enhanced, where there was a report of some inappropriate communication and then something suspicious happened in in close in time to that that did not result in violence. And then there were violent outcomes. In the database, which did not include the first monitor times the first judge killed, because the incidents didn't go back that far. There were two judges killed. So those were violent outcomes. And I realised that as useful as that was, for my own research, it could also be used operation. So the the Marshal Service, I'm receiving a new report could go into the database and say, well, it was it's a written communication from a prisoner to a federal judge who presided over his trial, what was the outcome? How many cases are we seeing like that? It might be 500 or 600. And what were the count those 600, when that type situation 99% of the time, it was specious. And the 1% of the time. Something happened that was suspicious but fell short of violence. And so from an operational point of view, the Marshal Service could kind of rank new threats from the level of security that might be needed only to put a full fledged body protection around to protect a well, no not. Not in that instance, it also helped going to the target of the communication and say, Look, we're concerned about this says all these things seriously. But our experience indicates that nothing serious is going to happen. These are the security measures that we're going to follow because we're going to respond to this but when we don't feel at this point that we need to do more than us and so you helped reassure the target. So there were a lot of pluses to it. So implemented that and the Marshal Service at the time that I was there. Going back to the 1990s. I continued writing the book, which is titled hunters and howlers threatened assaults to Federal Judicial officials non state. And the reason I came up with hunters and howlers is because we had a case in Topeka, Kansas, where they, man in his early 40s had been arrested for growing 100 or so, marijuana plants in on his farm. And with with that amount mount, they were able to get him for dealing in marijuana. Although all the evidence showed that he used it for personal use. He wasn't a big seller. He also had guns in the house because he was a hunter. He and his father in law like to go out and hunt whatever birds they hunt in Kansas as a hobby, and his name was night Jack Gary McKnight. McKnight was enraged at this system, the whole system came down on him and he was looking at a 10 year prison sentence which in the United States at that time, federal prisoners were not paroled, so he was going to do the whole 10 years. In his mind, no male and his family had lived past the age of 50. Something into this 10 year sentence was a death sentence in his mind, and he really felt that the federal government had declared war on him. And so he went on the day of sentencing. He went to court early in the morning, and shot his way into the courthouse. It's not clear if he had a specific target in mind, or just the court in general. He killed a court security officer which is a contract officer for the marshal service that runs the magnetometers and X ray machines. They're usually retired policemen. So they hadn't been killed one officer and through a ricochet he wounded a civilian who was at the clerk's office. And then after about 30 minutes or so night, killed himself. And so he became the kind of inspiration were what a hunter is. In my mind, a hunter is somebody who feels so unjustly treated, that they're strongly motivated to fight back. Midnight made a videotape the night before, and one of the things he says is, there's only one rule in a gunfight that's bring a gun, I'm bringing mine, I hope they bring theirs very macho kind of Clint Eastwood personality type and so midnight became a hunter in my the model for the hunter in my mind, and at the same time in the database, I kept coming across a guy named grey, who sent out dozens of letters a year to federal judges, mainly all over the country. And he was very prominent in the database he he literally got you would like a percent or two of the three types of cases and then letters would be eight or 10 pages long, they would go into just gory detail about, he was going to cut the judges head off and stick his arm down the neck hole. And he was going to write the judges wife and children and all these really horrible things that when a judge receives these things, it really panicked. Because Ray was so specific, and it was sent to the judge's office address at the courthouse, and it was very scary. And we got a couple of deputies. We know Ray was in prison federal prison, not only in prison, but he was in the mental health hospital in the prison. And so we sent a deputy to interviewing and he wouldn't talk. So the deputy talked to Ray's doctor, and the doctor went to Ray instead, Ray, why are you writing these letters? You know, you're not going to hurt them. Why are you writing I'm going to doctrine and said, Doctor if I didn't know my letters to write well, what I do all day. It's a write writing and threatening letters to Ray was a hobby. And so he I called him a howler, because I liked alliteration. So I had hunters and Howlers, ours make a lot of noise. They're very scary. Their intention is to draw attention to themselves. They want to frighten people, but they really don't intend to do these terrible things that that they write about in their communications and so howlers are not violent, but they still pose a problem. And they still have to be managed, if only because you don't want a Howler to feel ignored, and then suddenly become a hunter. Although there's a clear distinction between hunters on the one hand and Howard's on the other, they're really out of kind of continuum, that as a threat manager, you need to pay close attention to to make sure that the hauler doesn't start drifting over toward the precipice of becoming a hunter. And by the same token, although hunters tend not to threaten or bring bring attention to themselves, they do engage in what FBI researchers styled leakage so that they can come to attention. So having done that, I was appointed as the threat management advisor to the director of the Marshal Service. I got involved with the National Sheriffs Association through the Marshal Service with running a three four day seminar on threat management issues that I recruited instructors from the Secret Service, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, sheriff's deputy marshals, Secret Service. And so we went all over around the country training, deputy sheriffs and local law enforcement and what was their very new field of threat management. From there that got me into consulting and I partnered up with Steve Weston, who at the time was in charge of the California Highway Patrol's threat management unit. And we started riding together and we've now written four books together on threat management. I've been working in threat management for 30 years now.

Philip Grindell: 13:51

Wow. So I think I must have all of those books. So So what was what must be fascinating there? You know, you've been doing this 30 years. And so what you must have seen then is the the emergence of obviously social media. And therefore the volume of targeted threats, targeted abuse, targeted intimidation at public figures via that channel.

Unknown: 14:25

Yes, there certainly have been a gender revolution and it creates all sorts of problems, but I've always looked at it as what I call method of delivery, which is how a threat or an inappropriate communication or the thinking about committing violence. How is that communicated? So you're going to have Written threats, you can have verbal over the telephone now over the internet. And you can also then out to have suspicious activities. That is something that the target notices is happening around him or her that causes them concern, it could be stalking, target research. So those writing, and telephoning are keeping a distance between the subject who's making the communication and the target. And it's at the choice of the subject. The subject generally with, with the exception of informants, threads were somebody else's telling them the person written and telephone communications and internet communications or the choice of the subject. And what that choice seems to imply is that at this time, the subject is keeping some distance between him or her and the target. Where I get concerned is when the subject approaches the target or attempts to approach the term and either verbally communicate some inappropriate message or conducts stalking, research behaviours, gathering information about the target. Those are all indicators of a far more serious nature than I think. Written Communications and that type of thing, where you see a crossover now with because of the internet are these people who believe in themselves in the process of preparing and then launching their attack? So even though the internet is some puts a distance between target and subject, government, the subject has a camera and takes the Internet where they then you got a serious problem that needs to be paid attention to.

Philip Grindell: 17:15

So what what if I understand what you're saying, then what we're looking at is the behaviour is more indicative, then a form of communication from a distance?

Unknown: 17:30

Yes. General level and talking about behaviour. One of the things that Western anime first wrote about and expanded on and have used in all of our training is what we call the path to intended violence. And that involves behaviour that any individual who intends to commit an act of violence goes through these steps that culminate in the attack. So first, the individual, like McKnight has to have a grievance. Midnight's grievance was he felt that the government had declared war on him, and he was going to fight back, he was not going to go easily to prison for the rest of his life. And he was going to take preparation, he was going to do things to fight back. So you have to have a grievance. But we all have grievances. When we get cut off in traffic, we have agreement, we just don't want hopes act on it. And we get over it. So having an agreement, agreement alone isn't enough to warrant action. But what happens with hunters is they take their grievance and start thinking that, well, the only solution to this problem is violence. I had I can only resolve my injustice that has been dealt me through violence. And once they get the idea that violence is their only remedy. Now they've crossed the line. And they're going to start thinking seriously about how to commit the violence. Let's say you have grievance and then ideation from there, the hunter goes to research and planning. Now the research can be quite detailed or it can be quite minimal because the subject already knows a lot about the target. So for example, in domestic violence, you don't see a lot of research behaviour because the subject already knows where the spouse works with their routines are during the day where they are most exposed and that type of thing. So you don't see a lot of research there because the subject already knows. But in public figure and violence and where the subject doesn't know as much or personally about the target, you see stalking behaviour. You see them engaged, what exploring how to best get to the target. This is another time when the internet complicates things, because there's so much now, one can research from the safety of one's own computer, and they don't have to do what they had to do 20 or 30 years ago, which is actually go visit, physically inspect the sites, they can do that all over Google Maps now. So but they do have to engage in research and from the research, they develop a plan of what they're going to do. And the Planning, Research and Planning then leads to preparations. So they have to gather whatever material they need to carry out their plan. That's when you start seeing visits to the shooting gallery to practice firing their weapon, they may go out and buy weapons specific for the occasion, they may assemble the bomb. Those kinds of attack related behaviours. If they don't expect to survive the attack, they'll engage in what we call final act behaviours. They might prepare, we'll start giving them their personal possessions to family members talk ominously about not having a future with McKnight, for example, I asked his probation officer he had to go through a pretrial probation examination. And I said, was there anything unusual in your mind about midnight? And he said, Yeah, he never asked about the future. He never asked, How do I get to the prison? Am I allowed to take a toothbrush? Can I bring a change of clothing? He never asked that kind of normal questions that a an individual's about to go to jail asks, and that struck the probation officers unusual. And the reason I didn't ask, because they had no intention of going to jail, he didn't expect to survive the attack. And he was going to go out in a blaze of glory. So there was no need for him to know if he could bring a toothbrush or not that that type of thing. That's the kind of final act behaviour that that really should raise alarm bells, then from preparation, they have to then breach the targets. Security and however sophisticated or primitive that might be, but they have to get themselves or their bomb, or their attack to the target. The reason breezes important is several reasons actually. It's the last chance that the target has to or the target security has to respond. Gavin de Becker wrote a book called just two seconds, which he and his co authors postulate that bodyguards have a chance of successfully responding to an attack and the two seconds that one has, from time the attackers seem to be attacking and culminating with the Target breach is that last two seconds when security can respond. It's all breaches also important because we've seen quite a number of cases where the subject gets close to the target and changes his mind or her mind. For whatever reason, and they chickened out. They just don't, maybe they don't have the stamina for it. Maybe something goes wrong, but they back away. And so we want we want to look at breach just to make sure that we can that somebody can stop the attack or maybe that the attacker will retreat. And then of course, the last step is the actual attack. When you've gotten to the attack and the need for threat management is no longer necessary. So what threat management tries to do is divert Subject off the path to intended violence before they get to attack.

Philip Grindell: 25:06

So, if we start at the beginning and just kind of unpack a little bit about that, because when we look at grievance as example which which is a subject we've talked about on this on this podcast a few times. One of the, one of the elements of research is that some people who've targeted celebrities or prominent figures, and I think, you know, Chapman who killed Lenin, and others, there's this desire or there's this thought around this infamy this, this this, they want to be connected with this person forever. So whenever you now Google, John Lennon, his killer comes up with him. How does that fit into the notion of grievance?

Unknown: 26:02

Their grievance Hinckley's grievance was that he was not famous like John Lennon was. And the shortcut for him to get famous was to steal John Lennon fame. John Hinckley, his grievance for shooting President Reagan was that he wanted to come to the attention of Jodie Foster. And so that prompted him. It's those are famous secrets. And what their agreement is, is that not famous. There are other types of grievances. An individual gets terminated from his employment. His grievance is that was unfair. I remember a case went back many years, this individual performing poorly at work, he knew that he was not performing well at work. And the company fired him. And he accepted the termination because he knew he wasn't doing his job. What offended him was the company wrote him a letter. He had worked for the company for many years. And instead of calling him down, and Sydney, calling men sitting down and saying, Your performance is falling off, you're not carrying your weight, we're gonna have to let you go. They sent him a letter. And it was so impersonal. And he talked about how he couldn't sleep for days that every time he closed his eyes, he would see this letter that the company had sent him and it was just so unjust, a way to firing. So what was his grievance wasn't that he got terminated, if grievance was how they terminated him, and he went in, and if I remember correctly, killed a supervisor and wounded somebody else. And I can't remember if he killed himself, but it was all based on the fact of how he got terminated. Not that he was terminated. So grievances are, can be, and frequently are very unique and personal, to the subject. It mean, there is no kind of rational man standard, and trying to figure out why individuals set foot on the path to violence, that oftentimes, it would be incomprehensible to any reasonable person, and you kind of scratch your head and say, Why in the world, did he go to this extreme to do that? That doesn't matter. What matters is the issue the grievance is is so compelling to that person, that it doesn't matter if we understand that what matters is, is the subject feels that way, and begins to act in a way that culminates in a violent attack.

Philip Grindell: 29:07

I interviewed Reed Malloy not not too long ago on here, and in effect, it was read that gave me your details. And on that podcast, we talked about grievance and he, he broke it down and maybe this is simplifying things, but he broke it down to what he called these four elements, which he called blame, loss, anger and humiliation. Which I guess are kind of broad, I suppose signposts if nothing else for for a larger subject. And, you know, we look at the the the employees scenario of the individual being escorted out with this cardboard box, effectively feeling humiliated in front of all of his work colleagues. He might also be angry about it, but he's humiliated. And so you know, I wonder what your thoughts were because I quite you know, I thought that was quite a, it may be a simpler kept simple Vacation, but I thought it was actually quite a clever way of encapsulating what a grievance is.

Unknown: 30:08

Yeah, the background was I don't know if he still does. But he used to recommend that if you're going to fire somebody do it late on a Friday when everybody else is going home. And the reason for Friday is because the next day is the weekend and the guys used to be at home on the weekend. And so it kind of eases the letdown and voids the embarrassment that's inherent in that kind of situation. And that's a very good good advice is to be sensitive in how you're transmitting these things, so that you're aware that the person has feelings and sensitivities, and you don't want to make the situation worse. So I was I was in charge of setting up the workplace violence prevention programme at the Transportation Security Administration in the United States there. Think over doing all the screening and airports. So we had a workforce of within a year went from 24 people to 60,000, or something within I remember, we first we spent the first year hiring 60,000 And the second year, laying off 20,000 Because it was too much manpower. And that created a lot of problems. Because laying people off creates a lot of hostility. But I guess when I was running the workplace violence prevention programme, most of my work entailed the discipline process, the reaction to the discipline, I was meted out. I remember I was a great advocate. For the United States, we have equal opportunity, a process that if an employee feels discriminated against in some way they can go into this process seek a solution. And I was always encouraging disgruntled employees to file an EEO complaint, which appalled the lawyers. But it from my point of view, that tied the individual up in this bureaucracy that could go on for months, gave them time to cool off, while at the same time making them feel that there they were fighting back in some legitimate way. And as long as they were tied up in that, and they didn't have time to start thinking about, should I bring my weapon to work, or get back and get them in that way. So in threat management, you should always be looking at ways to direct the subjects behaviour onto legitimate avenues to keep them away from illegitimate.

Philip Grindell: 33:23

When I've looked at some of the cases and some of the research and even cases that we've had in the UK, one of the things that struck me and you mentioned or referred to this earlier on with with the individual that was not focusing on his prison sentence was that you can see that they've gone through a huge amount of effort, and spent a great deal of time planning, this journey, this this whole all the various stages of their attack plan. But very often, what you could also see with hindsight, was they had no exit strategy, they've never really considered what was going to happen at the end of this. And we've had a few cases here in the UK where some of our politicians have been attacked, and on a couple of occasions as an example, having attacked the politician, they've just sat down and waited for the police to turn on. And is that a common commonality or am I kind of identifying something right there or is that just a generalisation?

Unknown: 34:32

I don't know of any research that addresses that in particular, there may be but I'm not aware of it. But I've seen that happen as well. It happens I think more in cases of what we call impromptu violence. Impromptu violence is very similar to intended violence. It in turn There's a there's a grievance getting the idea of being violent. But it's spur of the moment. And so there's no research and planning, there's no preparation, it's the subject gets into a situation where maybe it's an argument or something that arouses emotion. And although they did not come to that situation with the intention of committing violence, they get so riled up that spawned spontaneously, they take a swing at the other person, or we I saw a lot of that at TSA, where two employees would be in the break room, I remember one case where we had two employees in the break room, and they got into an argument about what channel that television should be on and one employee hit the other with his fist. I remember asking the supervisor, what television show did this guy want to watch that is now costing his job. It was it was some financial report. So I was hoping that he had a lot of investments. He didn't go to work that day thinking he was going to flog his colleague, just in the heat of the moment. And so those are clearly cases where they don't pause to consider the consequences of what they're doing, and what that means. But with intended violence, they just accept the consequences. The violence is worth whatever the consequence is, whether it be their own life, and they don't expect to survive, or they plan to commit suicide, or they, they're comfortable with the idea of spending the rest of your life in debt, and knew what was going to happen to him. When he shot Atlanta. And he did in fact, he embraced that.

Philip Grindell: 37:11

Yeah, when he sat down and read his book, The New the, that he brought with him, that the Pathways is so interesting, the book was Catcher in the Rye. Yeah. Which was, which is obviously a was a sort of the popular book amongst a certain group of people.

Unknown: 37:27

My generation had to read it in, in high school. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if that turned out that generation of assassins.

Philip Grindell: 37:35

So when we look at the pathway, also, we see, or I certainly see the kind of lone actor terrorists, which is a kind of more recent threats, particularly, you know, certainly, you know, since the threat of ISIS days and the Islamic threat days, and certainly the UK, we've seen it with some of the extreme right wing threats, where they also follow this same pattern in terms of, you know, they had their grievance, whatever that might be in terms of their religious or views on racism, etc. But they do tend to follow the same pattern. So it's not we're not just talking about, you know, fixated people or what have you. We're talking rather the extreme of terrorism, these people are following the same methodology?

Unknown: 38:22

Oh, yeah. I think the path applies to nation states. It's just anybody having some intention to commit a violent act, has to go through these steps. And the the reason the, the steps are described broadly enough, that they fit that. And it's, I used it in training the workforce at TSA. Because I thought that it was such a simple, complex, simple idea, a simple model, that it's easily understood. And people can't my experience, people look at it and say, Yeah, that makes sense. And if that makes sense to them, then that gives them a context for evaluating information. The biggest problem, I think, one of the biggest challenges that threat management has is we can see threat management is a process of three steps, identifying a suspect, a subject, who may or may not be intending violence, that person has to be identified. Once they're identified, they need to be assessed through a threat assessment, where someone sits down and looks at all the evidence that they have at that moment, and says See how greater risk of violence does this individual pose. And then based on that assessment, the individual subject has to be managed. The most appropriately. When I say managed, what I mean is the threat manager has to manage the subject away from violence. So you have, identify, assess, manage, Western, and I, a couple of years ago started thinking about it and grappling with how do you get to identify? So often, we see acts of violence, workplace domestic and public figure violence, where the it comes out with nobody know what this was happening and Oberth, he was acting kind of strange. And he left a diary or he put a blog on the internet. And people were noticing him with the FBI researchers called leakage, but they didn't know how to report it to. And so what we've been working on in the past couple of years is, is how do you get the word out there? That rent manager wants to hear about these types of behaviours, these kinds of communications. And so we developed a one page, a broadside with a kind of generic description of the types of things that need to be reported. And then the issue is, who do you report them to, unless it's very large corporation, they tend not to have very vibrant security offices. And what happens is inappropriate behaviours may get reported. But they get reported to somebody who doesn't know how to act on it. We call these default receivers. In schools, it tends to be the guidance counsellor, the assistant principal for discipline, people who are not used to thinking about threats, who can't really imagine horrible outcomes. And so what we we've been arguing for, is, first of all, every organisation should identify someone, as the receiver as the designated receiver, of threat information Threat Report. Give that individual training, even if it's just basic training in threat management, and then have that individual go out into the organisation, whether it's a company or a school or small business, and educate the employees. That these are the this is the criteria that we want reported. In the, in the one page broadside that we came up with, we broke it down according to the path, the steps along the path to intend to violence. And so it was in we want indicators of grievance indicators of ideation research and planning, preparation. And you educate people that this is how to report and this is to whom the report should go, and where the reports go, needs to have some training, and also needs to be aware of how to get in touch with law enforcement. And we've further proposed that law enforcement, every law enforcement officer, whatever level should receive basic threat management training, because right now in the United States, at any rate, the law enforcement is often the default receiver and the emergency response, all route rolled into one. We gave some thought to what do you do in targets such as shopping malls, shopping centres, or arenas for concerts and things like that? Well, as they do in this country, they have posters all over the place that says, See Something, Say Something. And so we envision a kind of public campaign along that nature. These are the things to report and this is the phone number. This is where you report these kinds of suspicious things to but to at least get the word out. It's right now out, people are seeing suspicious behaviours, and either ignoring them because they don't want to get involved or not knowing who do I call about this? Who will I talk to about this. And so if every organisation had someone who was coordinating, even even as a collateral duty, not a full time duty, but just managing these reports, and knowing what to do with them would be a whole lot farther along than we are now. And it would lessen, we hope, it would lessen the way these things seem to surprise us. Radically in the United States almost on a daily basis, you read about a school shooting somewhere? And it's always seems to be surprised? Well, it's not. And it doesn't need to be if we can just raise public awareness. This is what to look for. And this is how to respond to

Philip Grindell: 46:03

you mentioned schools there. And that's a really good, good point, because I've looked at those and you know, I think, you know, very often you see, don't you afterwards someone saying, oh, yeah, you know, you know, we all knew he was the wrong one, or we knew we always, you know, he said this and what have you, but, but, but it's not reported, so they know something, or they have some suspicion or they have some concerns, or, you know, his behaviours changed or what have you. Or I'm saying he because I'm generalising but but they don't always understand what they're seeing or know what to do about it. But you've got this model haven't yet.

Unknown: 46:39

We had a shooting here in Virginia a month or two ago, by this is really tragic. a six year old first grader shot his teacher with a pistol that he had taken from that his mother had bought legally. And when she brought in from home, and according to news reports, there were three individuals at the school who told authorities that this little boy had a pistol. And then he intended to shoot his teacher and the school in honour spa. And they searched his backpack, but he had managed to hide the weapon. We had another case in Michigan last year, where this was a high school student. He and his father bought a pistol together and practice with a pistol rain. And the kid brought it into school, he came to the attention of the guidance counselor's because he was drawing pictures of a gun and shooting stick figure. And they questioned him about it, but they didn't search his backpack, which in the United States, the schools have authority to do that they don't need a search warrant. And he went back to class and shot several of his classmates. So there has to be some kind of rudimentary training. If these individuals come to your attention, take it seriously. Make an assessment? How primitive that is, and act on it. So the the process that Steve Wes and I are advocating is detect rapport and act. This is before you get to identify, assess and manage the steps that have to occur before that are detecting the subject as a potential violent individual, reporting that person to someone who knows how to handle the reports, and for that individual who received the report, then act on and the acting would be, identify, assess and manage.

Philip Grindell: 49:07

I think that's crucial. I mean, I know that you and I talked off off air before this, and I was we were discussing this issue around. So few people really understand the behaviours of concern, and particularly the pathway and that if they're not from the world of threat management, and certainly in the UK, that's it's still probably rarer. But all these issues are going on every day in the work environment in a school environment and other environments. And, you know, HR people, human resource people, secretaries, pas, whatever are receiving information information is coming in and they may not recognise or understand that this is a problem. And if they don't understand it, then they're never going to inform anyone in security. Right. And so, there is this. I've always felt this disconnect between You know, the actual threat assessments that can be as brilliant as you as you can be, there can be, you know, everyone can have you in their office. But if you don't know about it, you can't identify it and assess it and all those sorts of things. So I think there's some, this new piece of research, which which is a fantastic read is so crucial to fill that gap or of how do we, how do we get the I use this term, not I don't mean it to be in dismissively, but the uneducated to recognise that there actually is a process that they can report it, and then something then a professional can actually make that assessment.

Unknown: 50:37

And we're talking about, and I think this is a vitally important. We're not focusing on training the judges, the CEO, the public figure, the ones we want to reach out to, are the school bus driver, the people that tend to lawn around corporate headquarters, the fella that runs the snack bar. And the reason we want to reach out to those people, is because they mingle with the public. They're in a great position to overhear the school bus driver, knows who's dating whom, without the parents permission. And, you know, they because these kids talk, and the bus driver is just wallpaper. And so they pick up on a lot of things. The custodians pick up on what it meant. They're not normally the people that you think need to be trained. And yet, they're the best position, they're in the Hurly burly, they're down with the people. So you want to train receptionists and anybody that answers the phone and people who who have any contact with with the public or with others doing business with whatever organisation you're in, those are the people that that see what's going on. And they just frequently don't know where to take their information to. And with with detect rapport act, that sets up a process for getting that communication flowing, and for the right people to begin getting reports that they can then use to make assessment and management decisions.

Philip Grindell: 52:22

And I would also add, certainly, I mean, I'm very YouTube UK centric with this, but certainly, security personnel, frontline security personnel, you mentioned, you mentioned, theatres, and shopping centres and all these sort of places where you, you may well have static guards or other type of security on it. You know, you'll be familiar that we had a terrorist attack a couple years ago, on a on a large Music Centre, where an American artists was about two or three he was performing. And we've now got this whole concept called Martinez law coming in, which is around large venues, etc, without having to have a process in place. But the security people who are on the front line, they may be the ones that will detect the person doing the hostile reconnaissance, the same person turning up time and time again, at the same venue or, or moving, moving different venues as if they're following a particular artist or something. And yet, again, you know, we we often look at this, and we think you've had a great brief at you know, briefing before you went on duty, how good was your debriefing? are actually at the end of the day? Do you all just kind of hurry off home and no one really worries about nothing's happened. So let's just go home. And actually, this detection piece is the key piece here where it's about getting that information and saying actually, there was this guy, it was acting a bit strange and what have you, and that's the detection piece.

Unknown: 53:46

Oh, exactly. I don't know what they're doing with airport security now. But I always thought that they should have people out in the parking lot, just roving around looking for suspicious behaviour. Years ago, I went to a security briefing given by Israeli security forces. And I remember the fella said that the biggest challenge they had. And in terms of preventing suicide bombers, the biggest challenge they had was convincing their own people that you could prevent a suicide bombing. And they had ways to do it. For example. I remember him saying that at a gathering where there would be a lot of people say a politician giving a speech or something. They put people on the perimeter, looking forward to the lone person being dropped off by a car, because that's how the suicide bombers work. They someone takes them to the venue. And so they look for the lone individual maybe dressed inappropriately having a heavy coat during the summer or something. But it was this whole idea Yeah, you can interrupt the plan, you can disrupt that. But we need to convince our own security people that we don't want to just, we don't want them throwing their hands up in despair. We want them being aware and trained. And that's why we think law enforcement, local law enforcement, as part of their basic training, should get training in threat management and in recognising behaviours associated with the bat.

Philip Grindell: 55:28

I completely agree and certainly in the UK, that would be that would be something I would strongly reinforce, because certainly, you know, I worked in various environments in it, I had no threat management training, you know, when I, when I even when I went into parliament, I learnt this material, because I went off and learnt it on my own because I was fascinated about it and interested about it. But there was no training for it. And there still isn't. So I think it's it's, it's quite critical. And I think of every, every venue, every incident that police officers in the UK will go to, and how often are some of this material properly present? How often is it present, but because we're not aware of it, there's no reporting of it, there's no collation of that information.

Unknown: 56:11

The same is true here. It is a terrible missed opportunity, I think, and one that is easily rectified. I found at TSA, where we had 40 50,000 employees, we did, we set up an online course that every employee had to take, and it was just basically explaining the path through intended violence, why it was important, and what behaviours along the path look like, at a general level and who to report it to. And I never once heard that it was too complicated or too sophisticated for the workforce. We never had a complaint about that. Because if that makes as though, the concept is so simple, and, and obvious, when you point out to somebody, the reaction we've always gotten is Oh, that makes sense. I can see that. And that which is I think why it's such a beautiful concept. And should be used

Philip Grindell: 57:24

and trade complete completely agree. And as you know, I use it all the time. And I've, you've very graciously allowed me to amend it to review some risk things but which I'm very grateful for. But, Frederick, listen, I could probably spend the whole day talking to you about this, because it's such a fascinating subject, but I'm conscious of the time. I just wanted to say a huge thank you for taking the time to discuss this with me and particularly sending me a copy of your latest research which, which I've read and shared because it's so interesting. Huge privilege. Thank you so much for all the work you've done over the decades because it's been invaluable and I'm sure you've saved. Your work has saved a huge amount of lives. But thank you very much indeed for being a guest on the podcast.

Unknown: 58:08

Thank you for having me. I enjoyed it.