Transcripts For CSPAN3 Secret Service News Conference On 2018 Mass Attacks In Public Spaces Report 20240714

Critically important subject. Back in the 1990s, the secret service which by that point had long been involved in threat investigations and Threat Management embarked on a study as to the thinking and behavior of persons who engage in the violence against public figures or officials. The results set a foundation for how we investigate threats. Ntac was established to more bradley consider research, provide training and consultation in areas of threat and all forms of violence, whether or not they have endemic to the secret services mission. Since its foundation, ntac investigates studies. Attacks on government buildings and high profile targets. In a moment im going to invier ntacs chief to provide further insights on this years report and the efforts of ntac. But before i did i wanted to cover highlights i think are worthy of note and would bear repeating this. Years report focused on 27 incidents of mass violence, incidents in which three Megan Rapinoe people are killed. Incidents that were carried out in public spaces between january and december of 2018, and aamong the 27 incidents we are talking about events that took place at workplaces, schools and houses of worship. In addition, the report goes on to identify common themes in the background of the attackers. Half of the attackers were motivated by a grievance. Two thirds had Mental Health challenges. Nearly all experienced a significant stress sort in their lives and likewise all made threatening or alarming communications directed towards somebody or made in the presence of others. While there is no single profile of the person who commits targeted violence, this report, like so many others published by ntac aimed to help people in Law Enforcement and broader stakeholders in the community on how to understand better the motivations behind attacks as well as the causative factors. I commend the staff of ntac for their hard work. Im proud of what they accomplished and i encourage everyone to take advantage of the resources they created the training they deliver and the consultation they provide. All that being said, i ask the chief of ntac to come up and provide further information. Good afternoon. Thank you for coming. Im going to i know you just received the report and some of the talking points so im going to take you through some of the findings of the report, also as to why the secret service in this space and some of the reports we have previously published. All the information is available on the secret service. Gov website. As you can see in the first slide, these are the reports. As the director mentioned the secret service has been analyzing incidents of targeted attacks for the last 20 years, from the beginning of the exceptional case study project that set the standard for how to do threat assessment investigations and in fact that was that study that coined the term targeted violence. Since then we have ukt canned research on other incidents. Following tragedy we partnered with the department of education to study School Attacks based on the same methodology that the secret service uses for threat cases and the individuals that target public individuals. The findings on that study set the standard for conducting threat assessments in schools. Since then we continued as the study advanced its Research Mission to study other forms of targeted violence, including attacks against government and other spaces such as the report thats the focus of todays investigation. I wanted to highlight a guide that we released last year, enhancing School Safety using a model that guide we mass produced 80,000 copies and distributed to 40,000 schools nationwide. The guide set the standard for safety in schools. It provides schools with actionable steps they can take to set threat assessment protocols and keep their community safe. Today we are going to be talking about the mass attacks report, including mass attacks 2018 we released last year, looking at incidents in 2017, and the next report, mass attacks 2019. If we could go to the next slide please. One more. Thank you. Some of the findings from this report to highlight is that these incidents occurred all over the country. There were 27 attacks that occurred in the calendar year 2018. These attacks occurred in 18 different states. Some of them are high profile incidents, such as the tragedy at parkland and santa fe, but others are lesser known incidents that may not have garnered media attention, but no less tragic. These are the sites. The most common sites targeted were places of work. That doesnt include corporations, that includes hospitals, clinics, any place we work, including a government agency. Some of the target locations were open spaces. Those occurred on sidewalks, parking lot, and other areas where there are common spaces. As you can see, we also included three School Attacks. Santa fe is the one i mentioned. There was another School Attack in north carolina, and then the parkland tragedy. So there were three high schools targeted in this time frame. In last years report we also had some elementary schools. This year, three high schools and a house of warship, which is the tree of synagogue attack. Advance to the next slide. So this is why we highlight the focus of our trainings on threat assessment and prevention. We know from studying the incidents these attacks end very rapidly. Over half the attacks end in the five minutes or less. There were some attacks that did end in a longer period of time, and those are really an aberration. We know that Law Enforcement responds and active shooter drills are important, but whats more important is we want to be able to identify these individuals before they embark on that path that gets them to think violence is an option. If you can see some of the was lesion of how these incidents ended. Over half, the subject departed on their own or committed suicide. There were some incidents in which the weapon became inoperable. That of course includes vehicle attacks, because there were vehicle attacks in this time frame and two were as a result of bystander intervention. One was the waffle house shooting in which a bystander restrained the individual. Then in the last attack, the attacker stopped on his own and tried to blend in, but he was discovered. Moving on to the next slide. Lets talk about the backgrounds of the perpetrators. Every report we produce not only looks at incidents and tactics but most importantly it looks at the individuals who carried out these attacks to understand why and what behavior indicators they may have exhibited. In this report the majority were male. Almost all were male except two. Last years report was all male. The youngest was 15. That was a sophomore that carried an attack against the school. The oldest was 64 years old. The age ranges varied. Half had histories of criminal history. That included violent and nonviolent crimes. Also, over a third had histories of Domestic Violence. When we tagged, coded the cases that had Domestic Violence history, this wasnt disturbance calls or Emotional Abuse it was physically violent behavior or brandishing a weapon, so serious extensive histories of Domestic Violence. Moving on, symptoms of Mental Illness, the majority of the symptoms were depressive symptoms, paranoia. Those are symptoms we see in people who become fixated on a cause. In this report they had Mental Health issues that impacted relationships, whether they elicited concerns. For some of them it contributed to motive of why they carried out the attack. In term of motives, more than half for retaliating for a perceived wrong they felt was done to them for domestic issues, so a grievance the with a spouse or an intimate partner, related to workplace issues, being fired, passed over for promotion or disgruntled issues related to the Workplace Environment, or it was personal issues such as losing a video game competition, there was one attacker who targeted that, or getting into an argument with the manager of a retail environment and then coming back and carrying out an attack. Only two incidents had an ideology c ideological component to their motive. That was antiabortion who carried out an attack at the planned parenthood and then at the free of life synagogue carrying out white supremacist beliefs. For us as an agency, the secret service, our Number One Mission so to mitigate harm to any of our protected interests and work closely with Community Partners to do so. In terms of the National Threat Assessment Center we have a mission not only to enhance our own agencys security and protective mission, but also the communities in terms of preventing attacks against schools, preventing attacks against workplaces and so on. So the key mission to that is identifying individuals early on before they get that idea to carry out an attack. So if you move through this, the u. S. Secret Service Threat Assessment model for the last 20 years has been refined, adapted to prevent Workplace Violence, School Shootings and other attacks in the community. The first step is we want to be able to identify an individual some similar to how we identify individuals, we want to be able to identify these individuals in the community. Moving on. This is how they come to our attention. How do people raise concern about someone who might be at risk of engaging an attack or someone who might be eliciting concerning behavior . They either selfidentify, where they bring attention to themselves. They email, for us they would show up at a protected site, a for white house, or we get it from our partners in the community, federal agencies, Mental Health professionals, local agencies that might be dealing with that individual and then they raise concern. Members of the community. Obviously now with the advent of technology, theres a lot of postings on social media websites, game forums, chat rooms, even comments on a news article. Someone may be making a threat or displaying a really significant inappropriate interest in one of our agencys protectees and that would cause us to launch an investigation to swlee this person poses a threat. Similar to in the community, the lot of schools are being proactive. Communities and states are putting threat assessment programs in place so people can report concerning individuals so that person can get the help they need before they become to think of violence as an option. Moving on to the next slide. Now that we have identified the individual, the next phase of these threat assessment programs and objectives is to be able to gather information from multiple sources to assess, does this person pose a risk of harm, and what kind of risk do they pose . We use a Systems Approach. Our investigations are proactive. Its our number one investigative mission. The minute we find out about somebody we want to be out there gathering information. For the most part, the individual is going to be the first person we interview. We want to find out, why did they engage in the behavior that elicited concern and what did they want to achieve . Then we look at the individuals around them. We are talking to families, coworkers. We want to be able to understand what is the situation in life that caused that person to elicit concern . Same in a School Threat assessment environment, same in a company that has a Workplace Violence program. You want to gather information from multiple sources to get a clear picture of whats going on in their life. We know some people may act differently at work, differently in the home. You want to be able to gatter a perspective on that person and corroborate from multiple sources. So some of these investigative things we look for what should someone be doing when they get someone in the Community Whos of concern . What should they be looking for . These key themes to investigations have been hard part of our protocols for 20 years since the exceptional case study project was first initiated by the agency in the late 1990s. Since then, due of the number of reports and number of attacks that we have studied, from out there doing trainings for the community, from identifying best practices, we have identified a number of new themes that are part now of our investigative protocol. That includes behavior changes in a persons environment. Can we advance the slide . Behavior changes in the persons one back. Thank you. Whether that person has engaged in behavior changes. We are seeing these behaviors in the new incidents of attacks we are studying. Are they having difficulties with coworkers, fam members, schools, other students at the school. Are they having failed aspirations . Significant impact from having a failed as praipiration on their . We see that significantly in the report we released today. Are there a lack of consequences to some of the behaviors . Some of these individuals have elicited concerns for behavior that was quite concerning but they may not have elicited the consequences to reprimand that. Maybe the person did not want to press charges against them, or maybe in a Workplace Environment they have been causing conflicts with coworkers, threatening them, but a manager is not acting on that. These are the types of things we are seeing lately. Hindsight 20 20 for us to understand the incidents. But this is why we are training on this because we want to train the community with what behaviors might elicit concerns. Its not indicative of violence. We advocate early intervention. Identifying the behaviors that may set a low threshold or concern. Sudden or dramatic changes in behavior. Maybe more absenteeism, not showing up to work, more rhetoric, maybe theyre axing sites. Accessing a weapon. We want to identify individuals early. Once we have collected all this information, then you want to do an assessment of risk. When we assess someone who comes to our attention, maybe theyre not a risk to our protected but maybe theyre making comments about a neighbor theyre disgruntled with, their manager and workplace. We want to make sure we are communicating our concerns to the local police department. Our field Office Agents who carry out the investigations work very closely with our Law Enforcement partners. If we do decide there is a risk, then we need to manage that risk. We want to find out, what can we do to create a situation thats less prone to violence . What can we do the lessen an impact of whats going on in that persons life, and what can we do to take away the motive they may have for engage inning a harmful act . Each case is different, individual rise, so we need to make sure we are garnering our resources to address, which is why we work so closely with families a family around the individual. These are some of the management stranls we use. We dont have a magic wand. With work in the community with everybody else. Our field agents are working closely with their Mental Health centers that are close by them. Work closely with local Law Enforcement, they are working to address that persons needs. The number one thing thats important is to build rapport with individuals, build rapport with those around them. Those are the people we want are worried about and want to make sure theyre getting the support they need. As you see, there are a lot of considerations we put in the back kind of tying it all together in terms of findings of this report. Not every person was experiencing Mental Health symptoms and Mental Illness is not a barometer of dangerousness, but if they are mentally ill and have other things going on in their life we want to make sure theyre getting the care they need. They may not have a psychiatric illness but may be experiencing issues. May have anger issues, inability to handle conflict. We want to provide them resources as well. The number one thing is we like to encourage the community to share concerns about individuals whether its a loved one, classmate, someone theyre working with, because we want to make sure that person is getting the help. If the community is sharing their concern, then its really incumbent on the folks in authority to act on the concerns. Whether its Law Enforcement, school administrator. We want to make sure we are Encouraging Community members to share concerns, that we are being proactive helping those getting the help they need, using the approach to gather information and manage that risk. So thats all i had in terms of the report. Thank you for being here. If you have any questions, kathy . Well open it up for q a right now on the report. Whats really striking about both years is the similarities in the nature of the findings. What do you think what kind of intervention is not being done, do you think, to make inroads into what might be causing these attacks . So we have seen this before. There are challenges to information reporting of course. But i is have to say that even in these cases once we delved into the backgrounds there were instance where people reported their concern. We are encouraging communities to act on the kurn. In Law Enforcement is getting reports about an individual, make sure theyre considering it from a threat assessment perspective. If a School Manager is getting reports from coworkers or pelosi about their concern for that individual that they are acting on it. But communities need the resources and the training to be able to not only recognize the behavior, but what to do to follow up on that assessment piece. Thats what the secret service does. We are out there doing the trainings. We are encouraging informationsharing. We are encouraging people to understand, what are the warning signs and what can they do about it . Hi. Im from politico. I was wondering if you could elaborate about the School Shootings, more specifically about the perpetrators, common themes and Lessons Learned . There were only three high schools targeted in this report. I have to say that we are also currently right now, as part of our response to redoubling our efforts after the tragedy at parkland and also in support of the federal commission of School Safety, we are doing a new research, School Attack Research Study right now. We are in the midst of coding those cases. So i cant anecdotally talk about those findings. There were three incidents in this report. Some of the commonleties we have seen. Some are that the kid were experiencing issues and problems in their lives. Some of them, believe it or not, still bullying. Thats a big thing we are seeing. They may not be being bullied, but its their perception. Its the perception of what they are going through. We also saw they elicited concerning behavior from their actions. We have seen they posted consent indicating maybe not a direct threat, but indicating they may have an interest in school shooters, inappropriate interest in other mass violence. Those are some of the common things we have seen particularly in this report in those attacks. You spoke [ inaudible ] warning signs alone line. What are you doing about warning signs that were missed . Are you speaking in terms of the research or in terms of the actual investigation the agency does . Both. In terms of the research, right now, for example the School Attack study we are doing, when we first did the School Attack study, there was no social media back then. That was released in 2002. Right now a big component is social media. I dont have the data yet, but i can tell you we are seeing concerning posts. In terms of an investigative agency, obviously we get a lot of information from concerned citizens online. Sometimes its a threatening interest, but sometimes its inappropriate interest. One of the findings we have seen in previous reports for people who target Public Officials and they dont always make a direct threat. So we are not just concerned with people who make direct threats. We are concerned with people showing fixations. We have seen that in this report. Fixated on a cause, an issue, a person. That escalates over time. Some of the things to look out for is if you are monitoring social media, you are getting these reports, is to look at the context of the postings but also use that Systems Approach to be able to gather inform from multiple sources to see is this an aberration or a theme . If theyre writing about it online they are talking to people about it as well. One of the attacks in this report is the parkland shooting the fbi says you missed tips with that shooter. How have you worked with the fbi related to that attack and maybe streamlining their efforts to catch tips theyre getting moving forward . We have actually been working closely with them. Following the parkland tragedy there was a Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing that i testified along with the Deputy Director of the fbi. One of the things we discussed is having ntac train the Call Center Operators on how to identify, assess, similar to the secret service approach. I think one of the things that i have to give it to the fbi. They have been very proactive about streamlining their processes. They get a lot of tips. Obviously their jurisdiction is much wider than ours. We wanted to teach them, in terms of not am just focusing on threats, focusing on the concerns behavior. So we actually sent staff to the call center in west virginia, and we trained all shifts of the Call Center Operators and we also helped kind of use some of their protocols as well. So they have been proactive and engaged with us as an agency. You said your goal is to mitigate harm, and the aim of this report is to help prevent future attacks when possible. Yet, they still continue to happen. Why . Theres not a single solution to everything. And i think the more that we are out there training and the more that we are out there engaging with communities im telling you, more and more states are being very proactive now about the threat assessment process and want to be able to establish protocols within their community with Law Enforcement, Mental Health professionals, social service, schools, workplaces are working together not only the share information but to provide each other with resources. Ill give you an example. A few months ago we were contacted by the office of the attorney general for the state of wisconsin. They created a new School Safety office, and what they wanted to do while wisconsin doesnt currently have legislation mandating threat assessments in schools they wanted to provide the school with something. They drafted protocols we reviewed. We helped them come up with questions. We went down and participated in their press conference to roll it out and participated in conferences in wisconsin. I think the more we share information, the more that we are out there being able to provide the communities with the secret service approach, i think it will help really alleviate and hopefully prevent even one incident from happening. One is too many. Sorry. A majority of the attacks from 2018 happened at places of business. What is the center doing specifically with businesses and Companies Across the country, trying the mitigate what we are seeing in terms of these Mass Shootings . So we have been putting out a lot of the, obviously, reports. We make sure that we mention its not just a secret service interest. We are not just studying attacks against the president and a public official. We want to make sure we are providing this information to people. We have done a lot of training for corporate security as well. We have attended conferences that are business Law Enforcement conferences, which to me is very important. Its that building the collaboration between Law Enforcement and the corporate sector and businesses. We are providing the guidelines out there for them and we are trying to get this information out there as much as possible. But one of the biggest things businesses are going now are the workplace prevention programs. Dhs is establishing that, so we are making sure we are getting that information out there as well. International Association Chiefs of police conferences. I presented a couple of weeks ago in florida at majors cities chiefs of police, making sure the information is getting out there. Because also attending the conferences are private sector individuals. Yeah, so in put this is information out here today for public consumption, people hear what you have to say. Kind of bottom line it for us. What do you want the public, the average joe who may not be in Law Enforcement, the average person who may not understand the facts and figures what do you want the average joe to understand about this report today . A want to community to know prevention is evens responsibility. We all have a role in that. Its not just Law Enforcement alone. They need to trust their gut instinct that when they are concerned about someone, whethert a Family Member or coworker, report it to the next obvious person. If youre in a business and your coworker is threatening you to the point we have seen in these cases people thinking about resigning to not be around this individual. Report it to the manager. Then the onus is on the manage tore contact maybe human resources. We want to public to know, we are all concerned. We are all members of the community. We all have a stake in the community. The most important is Early Warning signs. Recognize that something is not right. Something is of concern. We need to let them know, who do they need to go to . This is why proactive Law Enforcement efforts, reaching out to Community Partners, faithbased communities to let them know, we want to know about these actions, not just about criminal acts. We want to know that youre concerned your Family Member may commit suicide, his behavior changed and hes not leaving the house for six months. We want to know if hes scaring your wife. We want to know so we make sure youre getting the resources to act on them. 24 of 27 attacks were perpetrated with firearms and also twothirds of the perpetrators had Mental Illness. Did you look to whether or not there were warning signs in Mental Illness that could have prevented the individuals from acquiring the firearms . You know the laws about firearms. You have to have been adjudicated to be able to do that. In terms of the findings of this report, what we found out is the majority of individuals that had Mental Health symptoms may have gotten treatment, may not, havent been committed. In terms of having an illness alone, that was not an indicator. In terms of acquiring the weapons that have not something that was easily accessible, but ten of the individuals had nix qualifiers unrelated to Mental Illness. Could be a felony quicks, dishonorable discharge from the military, and so on. From last year to this year seems about the same number of reports. A lot of things stayed the same at a baseline level. How can you assess, or is there a way to assess how much of an improvement . How much of a difference is there make something do you have metrics on how many attacks were prevented . Is there anything you can compare it to to see whether the u. S. Is doing better or worse than other countries, which the u. S. Seems to get most of the headlines for these types of things. What i can tell you from our research is that the majority of these attacks, in terms of how they were carry out, people elicited concern. One of the other things i can tell you is they had significant stressors in the Times Leading up to the a, the. We are never going to know what our interventions have prevented. Thats impossible to measure. But at ntac we are conducting in addition to the School Attack study we are conducting a report looking at averted attacks because we want to understand why were those attacks averted . What were some of the measures put in place . In terms of thousands of threats reported the state of the virginia was one of the first places to they have established tip lines, reports and so on. We know these are best practices because they have been doing studies and research on the threat outcomes in schools. They established that since virginia tech. In the state of virginia the research has shown theres lower rates of bullying, students coming forward because of the training in all of their schools. Their tip lines from 2016 to 2017 they had over 9,000 tips of concerning behavior for students. Not one result in the an act of violence. To me, Research Like that is really telling because its showing that somethings working, and we need to make sure every state is doing that. We need to make sure we are getting this information out there. I want to thank you all again for coming to the press conference and for coming out today, asking questions. If you have any followups you have everything there in the press packet. Everything is online now. If you have any questions dont hesitate to reach out and ask us. Thank you very much. Is have a good day. Democratic president ial candidates are campaigning throughout New Hampshire this weekend. Cspan has live Coverage Today at 6 00 p. M. Eastern from portsmouth with former Vice President joe biden. On saturday, new jersey senator cory booker is live in exeter, New Hampshire. Sunday at 1 15 eastern, Kamala Harris speaks in gillford. Watch live coverage of democratic president ial candidates from New Hampshire on cspan. Watch any time at cspan. Org and listen with the free cspan radioapp. Earlier this week, congressman Eric Swalwell became the first democratic candidate to drop out of the 2020 president ial race. He explained his decision at a News Conference in dublin, california. Good afternoon. Welcome to the ibew 595 union hall. This is a hall i know quite well. When i was a teenager i worked out of this hall on behalf of a Council Candidate and over the past 20 years worked to support the work of this union and the work and campaigns of other candidates around here, so a very fitting and comfortable place for me and my fami