Description
Local communities are establishing and expanding multi-disciplinary threat assessment and management teams in response to increasing acts of mass violence, bias-motivated incidents, school shootings, and lone-actor terrorism. Many of these tragic incidents involve adolescents who display behaviors indicating an observable high-risk for violence and a high-need for psychological and social support.
During the MHS Public Safety Webinar, Dr. Frank Straub (Director of the Center for Targeted Violence Prevention), Dr. Alyse Ley, D.O. (Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist), Courtney Tassin, M.A., LPC (Crisis Intervention Programs Manager for the City of Aurora) and Sammie Wicks, M.A. (Senior Program Manager at the National Police Foundation’s Center for Targeted Violence Prevention), will present two different but complementary multidisciplinary models of intervention. The Aurora Police Department established a Targeted Violence Prevention team staffed by behavioral health professionals and crisis intervention officers. In 2021, the National Policing Institute and Michigan State University’s Department of Psychiatry established the Center for Targeted Violence Prevention Research to Practice Hub. Our presenters will discuss innovative collaborative violence prevention models presented by both programs and case studies to demonstrate the need for these approaches.
Our presenters will also introduce valuable lessons for public safety, educators, behavioral health professionals, and juvenile/criminal justice officials. Specific emphasis will be placed on the need for collaborative multidisciplinary interventions to prevent acts of targeted mass violence that endure after mitigating the initial crisis.
Presenter Biographies
Dr. Frank Straub served for more than 30 years in federal, state, and local law enforcement. He is currently the Director of the Center for Targeted Violence Prevention, where he has conducted in-depth studies of targeted mass violence events in San Bernardino, Kalamazoo, Orlando, Parkland, and the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. He also leads the Averted School Violence project, a national database, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, that tracks, analyzes, and reports on averted and completed school attacks. Additionally, Dr. Straub is a practicing clinician.
Dr. Alyse Ley is a child and adolescent psychiatrist who has clinical expertise in working with adults, children, and adolescents with disorders related to trauma, mood, anxiety, developmental, ADHD, learning, and psychotic disorders. She teaches medical students and residents in MSU’s College of Osteopathic Medicine and the College of Human Medicine. She also serves as a lead advisor to the National Policing Institute’s Center for Targeted Violence Prevention on the Averted School Violence database project and has completed after-action reviews of the Route 91 Harvest Festival shooting in Las Vegas (NV), Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting (FL), and the averted Paw Paw High School shooting (MI).
Courtney Tassin is the crisis intervention programs manager for the City of Aurora, overseeing both the co-responder and alternative response team. Prior to this role, she served as the clinician assigned to the Aurora Police Department's Targeted Violence Prevention program and a co-responder for the Crisis Response Team. Courtney is a subject matter expert and instructor for Louisiana State University's National Center of Biomedical Research and Training. Additionally, she is a master trainer for National Threat Evaluation and Reporting Course program.
Sammie Wicks is the Senior Program Manager at the National Police Foundation’s Center for Targeted Violence Prevention. Prior to working with the National Policing Institute, Sammie served as a law enforcement officer for eleven years during which he led the Aurora Police Department's Targeted Violence Prevention Program. Additionally, Sammie currently serves as a Colorado Preventing Targeted Violence team member, supporting local threat management teams and statewide prevention efforts.
Learning Objectives
At the end of this webinar, you will be able to…
- Identify different multi-disciplinary violence prevention models
- Discuss the value of multi-disciplinary terrorism and targeted violence prevention strategies
- Demonstrate multidisciplinary mitigation strategies to prevent mass attacks
- Describe and implement recommendations for long-term case management and threat management that can be used to foster desistance of planned homicidal violence