I'm all for the FBI and all LE agencies being proactive in these areas, but the way this is presented seems more like someone puffing up their work to cover their backside. It's like they're claiming every mental health referral they worked was another mass shooting prevented.
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How do they know they prevented 150 shootings? Very misleading lead paragraph.WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI has helped to disrupt or prevent nearly 150 shootings and violent attacks this year, in part by steering potential gunmen toward mental health professionals.
Basically they had 148 cases referred to this unit.The FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit, for years, has been working with state and local authorities to profile potential offenders with the goal of preventing violent crimes like mass shootings. The "prevented" shootings and violent attacks from January through November of this year represent 148 cases that a division of that unit, the Behavioral Threat Assessment Center, has conferred on during 2013. And that number is up 33 percent from 2012, Andre Simmons, unit chief of the center, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
In the past year, this unit has received about three new cases a week referred by federal, state, local and campus law enforcement, schools, businesses and houses of worship, Simmons said.
The Behavioral Threat Assessment Center gets involved when someone notifies law enforcement, for example, about some troubling behavior, and law enforcement reaches out to the center to help assess the situation.
And here they flat out admit they have no profile that could predict someone will become a mass shooter.The Behavioral Threat Assessment Center operates with the knowledge that mass shootings like Newtown are uncommon, and that's important, said Ronald Schouten, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and expert on threat assessments.
"These occur very rarely, and there's no profile," Schouten said of those who carry out the shootings.
The center was launched in the fall of 2010. The unit's existence is not yet common knowledge around the country. But awareness is growing, as the FBI has recently been sponsoring two-day conferences about the threat of active shooters, Simmons said.
Having a mental illness does not mean that a person is predisposed to violent behavior, Simmons said. So a person's history and surroundings are an important part of assessing the threat.
