State needs a protocol for responding to warnings of violence
The Lewiston, Maine, mass shooter — who killed 18 people and wounded a dozen more in October — exhibited multiple warning signs of potential violence. Months before the mass shootings, his family warned law enforcement personnel that the shooter, an Army reservist, was paranoid and hearing voices and had recently recovered a weapons cache from storage. A month before the shootings, the Army Reserve sent a letter to the Sagadahoc Sheriff ’s Department warning them he was going to “commit a mass shooting.”
According to the National Institute of Justice, most people who commit a mass shooting are in crisis beforehand and are likely to leak their plans to others, resulting in the possibility of intervention before it is too late. Studies have found that more than 44 percent of mass shooters leaked specific plans beforehand to friends, family, and/or coworkers. A higher percentage displayed indirect forms of leakage — such as drawings, poems, or an obsession with previous shootings.
Behavioral threat assessment and management is a longstanding tool used to evaluate and respond to warnings of violence. BTAM teams, which include clinicians, law enforcement, and, in schools, school administrators, distinguish cries for help from actual threats. Research shows that schools that utilize threat assessment teams are less likely to suspend or expel students and have a lower rate of student arrests, about 1 percent; there is no evidence of racial bias in disciplinary decisions after evaluation. The goal of BTAM is to avoid underreaction as well as overreaction to warnings of violence. Many states, including Massachusetts, recommend but do not mandate the formation of behavioral threat assessment teams to evaluate warning signs to ensure clinical or law enforcement intervention before it is too late.
In states without behavioral threat assessment teams in place, a patchwork of prevention relies primarily on law enforcement to detect and deter events before they happen. But the Lewiston event highlighted the many gaps in this approach. Despite multiple warnings from the shooter’s family and colleagues to law enforcement, no effective action was mounted in Maine to prevent the tragedy. We must do better in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts has been a national leader in gun safety. While the state is not yet a leader in targeted violence prevention, it could be. The state already has many of the necessary pieces, including the Trauma and Community Resilience Center at Boston Children’s Hospital that specializes in reducing youth radicalization to violence and the Brookline-based Parents for Peace, which works directly with extremists and their families to pull them out of hate. Massachusetts is also home to research teams, including at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, conducting cutting-edge research on what can be done to reduce violence.
Other states have made significant strides toward strengthening their targeted violence prevention capabilities. So far, 28 states including Vermont and New Hampshire have either developed or are in the process of developing comprehensive state strategies. Colorado and Michigan have set up comprehensive statewide BTAM networks, along with anonymous hotlines, to identify adolescents at risk for perpetrating violence and connect them to care. Following the 2022 Tops Friendly Markets shooting in Buffalo, New York Governor Kathy Hochul enacted Executive Order 18 to prevent and respond to targeted violence; the order included the development of a statewide strategy and establishment of threat assessment and management teams. There are now BTAM teams in all 62 counties in New York, and in the first 6 months of operation the network identified two individuals who had stockpiled weapons and published manifestos threatening mass violence.
Massachusetts should have the same prevention capabilities. The state should implement the recommendations of the National Governors Association, which include the development of a state strategy and establishment of threat assessment teams across the Commonwealth. To be effective, the strategy should be comprehensive with clear lines of responsibility and the state should sustainably resource BTAM teams for training and ongoing operation. Given ever-increasing risks of violence, the state must act now.
Massachusetts has been a national leader in gun safety. While the state is not yet a leader in targeted violence prevention, it could be.
Shan Soe-Lin is managing director of the Boston-based Pharos Global Health Advisors and a lecturer in global health at the Jackson School of Global Affairs at Yale University. Jessica Stern, author of five books on targeted violence, is a research professor at the Pardee School at Boston University and is researching violence prevention at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. John Horvath is chief of police and emergency management director for the town of Rockport.