‘ Threat teams’ urged for schools

Secret Service offers intervention guidelines

WASHINGTON – The Secret Service has urged U.S. schools to establish teams that can assess threats and prevent shootings like the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that left 17 people dead.

In a report unveiled Thursday, the Secret Service offers schools guidance on spotting suspicious behavior and figuring out when and how to intervene. The report was prepared by the National Threat Assessment Center after the Parkland shooting Feb. 14.

The report recommends forming “threat teams” drawn from the ranks of teachers, coaches, guidance counselors, mental health authorities and law enforcement to manage central reporting systems within the schools. The teams would be tasked with flagging troubling conduct, from threatening social media posts to information about students’ access to weapons.

“The threshold for intervention should be relatively low so that teams can identify students in distress before their behavior escalates to the point that classmates, teachers, or parents are concerned about their safety,” the report concludes.

The 17-page document builds on agency research this year focusing on suspects linked to violence in schools and other public places. It says 64 percent of attackers showed symptoms of mental illness. In 25 percent of the cases, attackers had been “hospitalized or prescribed psychiatric medications” before the assaults.

In the Parkland case, which has driven a national debate on gun safety, social workers, mental health counselors, school officials and law enforcement were all warned about Nikolas Cruz’s deteriorating state and risk of violence. Cruz, 19, is charged with 17 counts of murder. Prosecutors seek the death penalty.

The Parkland shooting prompted the state to enact safety measures, including a mandate for individual schools to create threat teams similar to those urged by the Secret Service.

According to the Florida Department of Education, the teams would be permitted access to suspects’ criminal histories. Florida school team leaders would be required to report identified threats to administrators and the suspects’ parents or guardians.

Lina Alathari, chief of the Secret Service’s National Threat Assessment Center, said educators have been moving to create such teams since the attack in 2012 at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, that left 26 dead.