Taking threats seriously
A group of law officers meets three times aweek to take proactive action on criminal threats in the San Antonio area
SAN ANTONIO — The social media posts, allegedly written by a former teacher in the Northside Independent School District, started with a demand for money he claimed he was owed.
Over the course of 48 hours, the profanity-laced posts became progressively more alarming. At one point, police later wrote in court records, Dalton Austin Brown posted photos showing seven handguns and four semi-automatic rifles.
“I hope you sleep good buddy,” Brown, 28, allegedly wrote on a Facebook post to NISD Superintendent Brian Woods. “Time (sic) running out.”
Within hours, a detective with the San Antonio Police Department — using information gathered by a police officer with Northside — filed a warrant for Brown’s arrest. Itwas signed by a judge and Brown was arrested later that day.
The quick and coordinated response was part of a new initiative, called the Triweekly Threat Assessment Group, that involves officials from more than 10 local, state and national law enforcement agencies who meet three times aweek to evaluate possible attacks in Bexar County.
“This is not traditional policing,” said Sgt. Tina Baron with the San Antonio police, one of the agencies involved. “Is something arrestable or not? That’s traditional policing. Our approach is different, in that we’re preventative in nature.”
While partnerships among law enforcement agencies have existed for decades, there wasn’t a formal process in place — at least in Bexar County — for police officers across jurisdictions to quickly and efficiently share information and evaluate possible threats.
About a year ago, that began to change.
In October 2019, a group of local, state and national law enforcement agencies at the Southwest Texas Fusion Center, an intelligence- gathering hub, started meeting to identify and assess possible public safety threats.
The approach was based on a model developed, in part, by the FBI to prevent mass attacks, such as school shootings. It since has been expanded to identify and address other forms of targeted violence, including stalking and terrorism.
The team in San Antonio is the first of its kind in Texas, officials say.
In May, the city of San Antonio, which manages the Fusion Center, received a $750,000 grant from the Justice Department to pay for new equipment, additional training for team members and increased overtime to re-review older cases.
Now, the group meets three times a week — albeit virtually these days — to identify possible acts of violence and determine the likelihood of an attack. From January to October, the group has reviewed about 350 cases, Baron said.
“The FBI doesn’t have the resources to handle every threat in this city,” said Christopher Combs, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Antonio Division. “That’s why this initiative is so important. It really is a community effort.”
In some situations, the suspect was not arrested but redirected to other community resources, such as the Center for Health Care Services, the county’s largest provider of mental health and substance abuse services. A representative from the center regularly attends the meetings.
“A lot of this is about helping people,” Combs said. “It’s not just about arresting people.”
While the Fusion Center had been doing threat assessments to some degree — representatives from multiple agencies are stationed there to gather intelligence and manage real-time security threats — the group decided theywanted to create a formal framework using “best practices.”
Together, they established up a key group of members, including local, state and national law enforcement officials, representatives from mental health facilities and school administrators.
They also set up away for local police officers to refer cases to the group for review and a rating systemto determine the severity of threats.
Quickly, officials said, the benefits became apparent.
“The magic happens when we’re all in the room and we’re all checking our separate databases,” said Randy Reyes, an arson investigator with the San Antonio Fire Department and a member of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. “It really opens doors.”