Necessary Change For Prevention & Mental Health In Targeted Violence And Terrorism Prevention

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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Kapua Nukes. As always, I'm your

host, Mr. Whiskey. And on the show, we've covered a lot of different types of hardships,

including domestic violence and sexual assault and school shooting prevention, you know, all

acts of violence to some degree, even terrorism. And we're going to get into that subject

in much more detail today, talking about solutions to specifically targeted violence and

targeted terrorism. I think it's something that doesn't get discussed as much as these

smaller, isolated acts in these, you know, more mainstream, like domestic violence, sexual

abuse, very important stuff to still cover, of course. But one of the foundations in,

you know, why I made this show is to spread awareness about a variety of different subjects

and to especially cover those more niche and overlooked subjects, such as the school

shooting prevention. And today, we're going to get into, like I said, targeted violence

and targeted terrorism prevention. And so we are here with Robert Mahoney. Could you please

tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure. Well, thank you very much for having me on

the program. It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Robert Mahoney. As you mentioned,

I'm the founder of TVTP. So that's targeted violence, terrorism, prevention, solutions.com.

For a consulting firm, we work with municipalities, school districts, law enforcement agencies,

mental and public health entities as well, to augment existing prevention strategies, specifically

targeted towards targeted violence, sort of the worst case end scenario that you could

possibly have. But a lot of our strategies and techniques and methodologies are multidisciplinary

so you mentioned a bunch of different sort of risk factors or risky sort of end products

such as domestic violence or substance abuse, suicidal ideation. A lot of the techniques

that we sort of implement are multidisciplinary so they can be used for those things as well.

But we really are trying to push this idea that prevention as a strategy has been undervalued

and that we have generally seen an overvaluation of things that we would classify as protection

or preparedness slash response. So sort of your active shooter drills, that would be a

preparedness slash response, that's not a prevention sort of methodology bulletproof glass,

cameras, fences, things like that. We put those while yes, they may have a prevention

type bent to them. We look at them as more protection measures. And so what I mean when

I go when I say prevention is that we are looking to use an industry term very upstream.

We are looking at individuals and being human centric in evaluating the behaviors that

we are seeing, looking at individuals that are not weird but could be potentially in crisis

and educating both the general public as well as people who are responsible for keeping

us safe and taking care of us at our times of needs of understanding what to look out for,

but also to shift the framing of what they may be doing to a more prevention centric approach

and sort of get an equal balance amongst all three sort of stages of prevention, protection

and preparedness. So that security is more holistic and we're able to address things early

on instead of letting them fester and then having to have an over exaggerated response.

And oftentimes a failure of response just because of the details of the actual attack.

So that's sort of the long and short of what we do.

And I always say on the show, you know, prevention is more important than intervention.

Be ready for both, like you said, but when we were talking about school shooting on my

podcast, what we said is it's not a matter of like you said, bulletproof glass, getting

guards and stationing their cycles of certain way, the beginning of it, the biggest step

and protection in prevention really would be mental health conversations, right? Because

most of the times you could have the greatest plan ever, the enemy in the school shooting

scenarios, 99% of time knows the plan. They participated in the protection and preparedness

plans themselves, right? So it starts with mental health and same with targeted violence.

So when we talk about targeted violence, can you give us some examples? Is this, hey, a

disgruntled employee decides they're going to kill or assault their boss or co-workers

and shows back up at the job? Is this someone making some kind of seeing what classifies

as common types of targeted violence? So the distinction between targeted violence and

terrorism is, is thin, but it is very pronounced. I'll, I'll say that. So all targeted violence

is terrorism, not all terrorism is targeted violence. Okay. And so when you are speaking

specifically about targeted violence, you are specifically talking about an individual or a

number of individuals that commit an attack on a specific group or a specific target for

because, and for a, for the purpose of furthering a, a goal of political or social commentary, right?

And where terrorism is doing the same thing, but they don't have necessarily a, is specific

a targeted audience, if that makes sense. So terrorism is sort of more broad. So you take sort

of like 9-11, they, they did their attack. They didn't really care who was in the towers,

as long as the towers were being blown up. A school shooting, they may be specifically targeting,

you know, a certain group within that school or certain individuals within that school,

or if you were talking about a church shooting, it may be because of the people that, the religion

that they are at, or the people that generally have a certain race that, that go into that church.

So those distinctions are important to, to sort of delineate between targeted violence and terrorism.

To your point about mental health, you're absolutely correct in that one of the things that

has really, I feel, set us back within the prevention space has been this sort of framing around

these attacks as random acts of violence. And what that does is that, that creates an environment

and a mentality that these are unforeseen attacks. They're just random. We all just happen to live

in the worst lottery bingo game of all time and that we are just waiting to see if our number

gets called and too bad. And that actually is scientifically unproven. There is really no such

thing as a random act of violence. These individuals, when you look at their character arc post

attack, you often see interactions with either law enforcement, mental health, a number of different

behavioral issues at school, sometimes for months, years, decades of concerning behavior.

And it really is tough to kind of square that circle when you have, after each attack, sort of

an admission on the part of those different sectors that yes, they were aware or the general

public comes out and says, yeah, I had reported this individual because I was worried about them or

they were doing things that were concerning or they were posting things online that I got worried

about. So that really flies in the face with this idea of that there's some randomness to this

and we don't know who these people are or what's sort of triggering them. And so what scientists

have sort of behavioral scientists and people in the prevention space have sort of come across

is that there is a legit pathway that people follow. Sometimes they jump from from step to step

and there are steps that sort of go throughout but for the most part there are defined steps

that that happen. The other thing that I think puts people on the back foot in a more defensive

sort of approach is even from what I do and people like me within the prevention field do,

you'll hear something called behavioral threat assessment. At the core of behavioral threat

you are trying to eliminate your biases upon that individual. You are trying to dispel the

profile or you're trying to dispel wanting to get into a debate with that person and sort of

be supercharged over what they are sort of ranting about or what they are attaching themselves to

and really focusing in more on the behaviors. Are these behavioral signs that somebody is

struggling? Are these behaviors, are these unusual concerning behaviors that need to be addressed

and do they match those same behaviors that we have seen of other shooters and other attackers

and their character arc? And so I don't particularly like the term behavioral threat assessment because

much like random acts of violence it puts a spin on the you know the framing for your sort of

the general public audience that you are looking for things that are specific to violent threats

rather than things that are in that person's life that they are struggling with and so things

like just quitting the soccer team with no announcement or the death of a grandfather or the

breakup of a girlfriend or a boyfriend these are not things that would lend themselves to be

reported on in terms of a threat right they have nothing to do with violence they have nothing

to do with a behavioral threat assessment or anything like that and it seems very heavy handed

but when you look at doing effective prevention methodologies those are the types of instances

when you look post-attack that sort of have compounded and built upon themselves because those

different innocuous one-off incidences were not addressed early on because that individual did not

get the care or the tension that they needed in that moment they ended up finding the care and

attention in something else that sort of compounded their isolation or compounded their their

radicalization sort of mentality and everything else and we have created systems based upon sort of

a threshold where we wait for some type of threshold to be crossed and then we respond instead

because again the way in which we frame things in terms of threat and everything else those things

don't necessarily look like threats and so going back to what I said earlier of having my prevention

methodologies and strategies be multidisciplinary individuals who have carried out these attacks

also have shown high rates of suicidal ideation they many of them have substance abuse whether

in their family or with themselves as well a whole host of domestic abuse and all these kinds

of things that have contributed to sort of their their character arc and so you can actually

really institute interventions or intercessions was something that I sort of I like to use a

little bit more you're interceding upon their behalf rather than doing a full-fledged intervention

and I can go into into the specificities of why I like intercession rather than intervention

but they are they they can be used multidisciplinary where you can really sort of kill two birds with

one stone and in a lot of different ways all right I'm struggling to quit smoking on your own

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today your heart and your future will thank you for sure and I think one of the issues is

a lot of us are judging and making these predictions based off of more shallow factors rather than

the behavior but you know for example I grew up school shootings were not very common until the very

end of my high school time which then led into the covid era right but now I know like I've gone

to your high school to talk to the leaders about speaking on stage and I've had to go through

multiple you know metal detectors and guards and it feels like a prison almost I hate to say it

compared to when I first went to school there were no guards at all and then in high school at some

point we got a security guard and then you know just built layer upon layer but that's an interesting

sorry to cut you off there because that's such an interesting point I want to I do want to drill

down on that because that is it's a really important point when we're looking at I mentioned really

about sort of like the balance of security right and how we tend to have an over valuation on

sort of those more visible protection and in sort of response matters and that often has a

counter narrative to what we're actually trying to achieve in a space and so in your example when

you went through there and you sort of said it feels more like a prison than it does a school that

is often the case of the narrative that people within that environment have where you are trying

as a security professional to showcase that you are a safe space that you are ready to tackle any

kind of of issues from a security standpoint but what people within that space feel is that this

is an unsafe spot because you have all of these things something must be wrong within this environment

and therefore I'm actually more on high alert and as a security professional one of the things

that is really important to get a little bit zen with this is that you are trying to make the

water as still as possible okay so that you can tell what is causing the ripples okay anthropologically

our evolution as human beings our senses, sight, smell, taste, everything else it does our brains

only have a limited amount of bandwidth right and so we're taking in a lot of information and what

we prioritize from the security standpoint are those abnormalities are those ripples okay

if you flood the zone sort of speak with a lot of noise and just chatter and stuff like that

as a security professional you are unable necessarily to see many of the warning signs what you will

focus in on is things that are right in front of your face and so when you go into a school or I

talk to you to school you know staff members and superintendents and principals and things like

that I often ask them you know what you tell me what the difference is between the quiet kid in the

corner who's just a quiet kid or the quiet kid in the corner who's in the depths of isolation

right and is struggling with with isolation and most of the time they can't tell the difference

right and what they will naturally do is just the person that is causing the most ruckus

or something like that that is where they focus their attention on and I think you made a great

point that that that counter narrative with protection is something that is is sort of perverse

throughout the the security field and has really done a disservice to to the prevention mission

because there is a weird visualization of theoretical value when we see those things

that oftentimes has a very very thin balancing point of where you know having a certain amount

of security feels safe and then you you tip over and now everybody feels unsafe and so I I wanted

to to give you props for for recognizing that because I that that is a really good point

100% you also touched upon one of the things I was just getting to but before I get to the other

point I want to go on that point like I don't go out to a lot of clubs or bars but I remember I went

to a very small club and they had like five cops in there stationed just permanently and that was

the least safe I've ever felt in a club like it seems you know obviously ironic to people but for

me it's like what if you need that much that means your yes you could say hey I'm prepared or it

means you believe that there's a strong chance that there's a there's a history of that and so like

I when there are police downtown I feel less safe than if I don't see one which is ironic but

that's how it is and you know we talked about the mental health impact that has on our children

in school where they are dreading it the whole idea was that they paint kindergarten classrooms

bright yellow and these warm colors to make it feel warm and cozy and now you've got people going

through security at one point in my school you had to scan in and have someone escort you into

the bathroom because of that was because of people vandalizing the bathrooms which I don't get

it's just immature to just destroy school property but we I mean do you feel safe having a person

you know like a foot behind you at the urinal watching you you know watching you watching you

watching you hopefully but right it creates this environment of the same thing if I go to a store

and the person the shopkeeper is just staring me down the whole time or sometimes they follow you

I mean it's just uncomfortable but what I was getting to originally with that point was

even though my time in high school was before school shootings got very significant you know I was

often called you know future school shooter because quote I didn't smile a lot or because I had

quote shifty eyes you know there's a lot of friends I had who work quiet kids as you mentioned there

who would go and read a book instead of play recess or whatever it was and I think one of the

issues is we've gotten to these stereotypes and like you I like the way you said it you're reading

into too many signs what are the signs we need to focus on that are the real truth right the

difference between a kid who is isolating in despair in that death of isolation or someone who is

just more reclusive and introverted by nature and I think that's one of the issues is we've gotten

this through social media especially you know identifying certain people certain groups or

characteristics as school shooting potential threats rather than just hey what's behind those

qualities yeah absolutely and and this is a difference between sort of risk factors and behavioral

indicators and so risk factors are non predictive okay you can have as many risk factors as you

know check out all the boxes and that isn't a prediction of of future violence or future

suicidality or substance abuse or anything like that like I often find it interesting within the

public health space when they talk about risk factors because it always looks like it is always

presented from sort of an outside looking in where you can have communities that have a tremendous

amount of risk factors but when you interview the people within that community they don't look at

it as a risk factor they look at it as life right and so you know we we tend to

distance ourselves from from evaluating risk factors simply because our own biases

place such a big role in in our decision making when we just focus on the risk factors it's not

that they don't have you know it that they're not important to evaluate but they are not indicative

of predictive behavior okay and so looking at the behaviors are far more predictive of what

might be going on or what is potentially to go down the road and and there's just a a nuance

approach towards that and and it's just a human intuition just societally that we we focus so much

more on on risk factors and put our own biases on that we end up with sort of clicks or different

profiles of individuals that we believe as you said are going to you know you know voted the

next school shooter right in school or something like that which for this for the only reason that

you know they are quiet or they're they're not as social or or anything like that

100% and now one thing would you say that as people you know who are who are not professionals

let's say we're just a co-worker in that space or a teacher or a fellow student and we think someone

has risk factors or behavioral you know threats and behavior what would you say is would you

say that the number one policy is just see something say something air on the side of caution not by

confronting them directly but by going to someone more professional who can evaluate that more

properly absolutely absolutely and this is this kind of goes back to what we were saying of this idea

of like there's no such thing as a random act of violence you you you these people are not

you know international agents of mystery okay like people see them they talk about them they know

they have concerns about them they try to stay away from them or don't interact with them

or something like that because their behavior is so erratic or is so concerning okay and so

part of what I try to get across when I do my speaking engagements and things and do my trainings

is that I'm not trying to train intervention specialists okay I'm not trying to put people in a

situation where it could potentially get dangerous or confrontational or anything like that so

yes by all means if you are concerned about an individual's behavior or you are concerned

enough that it's feeling uncomfortable by all means and this is where the responsibility

of the office the school the town comes into place because you mentioned something called see

something say something which is an excellent campaign that's that sort of really took hold

sort of after the 9-11 attacks and has sort of just become ingrained within society the thing that

is is odd about that is that we don't necessarily have a reporting problem as I just mentioned right

like these people are known and they they're already being reported you don't get on a watch list

from the FBI or your local police department or suspended from school or something like that

if if somebody hasn't said something what we have the the real gap that we have in this country

is more coordination problem okay we have sectors whether it's law enforcement or you know the

public health and and and education sectors and things like that that are very rigid these systems

are are very specific for certain types of issues and problems I've worked with a lot of states

and public health entities in different states and many of them could tell you through analytics if

you were a first time recipient of food stamps they could basically tell you from the month weekend

that you would come back for housing assistance right the coordination between

the food stamp people and the housing assistance people is almost nonexistent or it's flimsy at best

same sort of thing with the law enforcement sector law enforcement has protect and serve

on the side of their cars not prevent and serve they have a specific role that society has sort of

bless them with and as long as that individual isn't doing anything illegal law enforcement

really has a tough time doing sort of any type of response actions same thing with mental health

going back to sort of the mental health and public health right if if there isn't a a threshold

need there often is not a a a mechanism to do coordination or early prevention of anything they

have sort of stove piped themselves for the looking for the word here optimization of of responding

to a specific thing and putting sort of the blinders on of all of the coordinating different

intangible things that are contributing to that problem and so it it it is while it is fantastic

and I encourage everybody to not keep their mouth shut if they find somebody that or or know of

somebody that is that is struggling and that they are concerned about it is also the responsibility

of of the systems that we've sort of put in place to protect us that they are of some type of

coordinated response or coordinated information sharing or have reached out to other programs

and organizations maybe at the community level where okay this person doesn't meet the requirements

or threshold for us to respond but we have a memorandum of understanding with this organization

at the community level and and they're willing if we give them a call they're more than willing

to go and meet with that individual and see if there's any assistance that they can provide

right I get what you're saying the issues with especially mental health services you can't

force someone to go to therapy at the end of the day you can only take them into a mental health

hospital or to that level care typically if they're actively suicidal or endangering others and

like you said a lot of these behavioral factors are not actively endangering someone they're just

part of patterns that we've seen historically and so with that kind of frustration and

but reality there so what can we do what is the solution to this targeted violence in this you

know terrorism how do we prevent it then what where does that start well it starts sort of

that there's a great analogy that I that I use many times in my talk and in if you if you bear

with me on it it kind of goes but I'll circle back I promise it in the late 70s and early 80s the

two most reliable cars on the market was a Mercedes AMG something or other roadster and a Toyota

Corolla and the Mercedes couldn't understand the the how Toyota was able to create such a reliable

car at the price that it was it was selling at because Mercedes had taken a lot of effort in

training up their manufacturing staff they flaunted this sort of like 600 point

inspection after the so before the car would ever hit the the the lot and they would make sure

that everything worked absolutely perfectly and those inspectors were trained and had an

apprenticeship and all this other stuff and there was a premium that was put on that

and Toyota didn't none of that and nobody could understand why and eventually it sort of came out

the reason why Toyota didn't have to do the apprenticeship and didn't have to do all the training

for their manufacturing is because they integrated the quality control within the manufacturing

process and so everybody that was on the line was able to stop the manufacturing line for whatever

reason if they thought they saw a problem or did see a problem they had the power to stop the

line and address that issue right then and there and it wasn't done for retribution sort of

purposes they weren't looking to isolate an individual on the production line you did a bad mistake

it was really a shared responsibility kind of thing and I think one of the to go back to your

question of sort of what what is the solution to to finding these things is being able to integrate

that quality control amongst you know society okay and sort of being able to take temperature checks

at different points in time along everybody's life everybody is going to go through ups and downs

everybody's going to have certain grievances everybody's going to have you know some hardships

and some struggles going along the way and really what we need is just to sort of have somebody

stop the production line and say hey do you need help or what can we do what kind of services

can we provide for you yet you over this this little hump because right now we're taking sort

of a Mercedes-Benz approach where we're waiting for the car to kind of get all the way through

and then all of a sudden the individual will post something online and he'll have you know

two guns and or an threatening message of like tomorrow's the day I'm killing everybody

blah blah blah and then we have all of these professionals swarmed down on everything and then

we're like oh look we had like years and years of tall tail sounds that individuals were we're

getting to this point now two Mercedes you know credit and to it can be done you can level up your

security and you can level up your prevention sort of strategies to an ultra specified amount

where you know you might be able to catch all of those those incidences of violence coming through

but you're really trying to thread a really delicate needle between the time of expression of

threat and and the actual attack happening and it's going to cost you a lot more and the ripple

effect of doing that type of level of response to everything around it to the town around it or

to all the occupants in your office or to all the students in your school has a lasting effect

that is is really counterproductive okay it causes more trauma and more stress than actually solves

the problem and that kind of goes back to what we were talking about about you know the protection

and response measures and and the overweightness of it and the environment in which you know it

feels like a prison in here or it does it feels like an unsafe space for me to be in and so

really the key is to begin to just reframe how we address this problem and look at it from a lens

of how do we become more proactive and more on the offensive side rather than delegating to the

more defensive and reactive side of things and you know I I am a firm believer that you know there

are three kind of components to a holistic security approach and that's prevention protection

preparedness slash response those things are all interconnected where if one goes down they all

kind of go down and so by not putting enough value and enough time and effort into upstream

prevention approaches and methodologies you're actually doing your security a disservice

I agree 100% and it says simple as having a conversation one thing I did like that I learned

in the military at some point and they've gone through a lot of different reformations in terms

of suicide prevention but at one point I heard a term act which was ask territory and like you

said asking those questions along the way into continuing with your analogy if you do find something

wrong after you put the whole car together now to go fix it you have to take stuff apart there's

other stuff attached to it and in real life you know if you had dealt with the grief or the lack

thereof during for example the passing of a close one at the beginning that's all there was too

but let's say now you've let it get to the point where there's addiction involved now it led to

addiction where it led to other mental health issues where it led to poor relationship choice

right there's so much more to unpack now whereas if you deal with it along the way you can catch it

like you said by itself when it's quote cheapest it in most efficient to fix so I think that is a

huge issue and you know I think one of the things is like we also make school shooters unintentionally

through our our prevention like I said we've created almost this label and serotype that is used

unfortunately in bullying and sometimes we push people to become school shooters who were never

going to be but we labeled them as that and we pushed them into that and that's I think is truly sad

no it is and you know understanding radicalization and understanding how people even get to sort

of like the front door of the pathway of violence is is important in understanding the human

psychology and the emotional attachments that we sort of end up getting it's important to realize

that the human brain has to know what it is okay it is unacceptable for us to not know who we are

so there is there are kind of you know three buckets that I like to use that we are all searching

for and the in those buckets are labeled identity community and purpose okay we will

attach ourselves two things that fill those intangibles and so going back to sort of the risk

factors and the profiles and things like that we focus a lot of our attention on the what but not

the why okay and so what you know far anti government or anti this or a bunch of different

conspiracies whatever it is right it doesn't necessarily matter too much because what we are

attaching ourselves to is more those intangibles we are finding an identity with this we are finding

a community that accepts us when we attach ourselves to this and we're finding a purpose in life

okay and that becomes our emotional and you talked about sort of addictions and things like that

this is an emotional sort of addiction or or or almost a hostage type thing we have seen

numerous shooters who write sort of in their manifestos these confessions of I'm sorry

I didn't want to do this I don't I know this is as bad etc etc right and we have this sort of

weird question like if you knew that this was going to be so horrible if you knew this was going

to be so painful to so many people why don't you just get off right like why don't you just

step off and they are they are psychologically and emotionally unable to do that because unlike

substance abuse where there's like a chemical dependency on that this is far more devastating

because you can't your brain will not allow you to just be a drift okay and I had mentioned

earlier sort of wanting to reframe it as more of an intercession rather than an intervention

intervention comes has like a top-down power dynamic it kind of comes over the top where you are

basically asserting your control over that individual because you believe that they are unable to

make decisions for themselves and in certain cases especially with substance abuse that is the case

right when you have somebody who has been radicalized to the point where they are thinking of going

down a pathway of violence when you do an intervention and you take that style approach you are

you are directly focusing your your efforts on defeating what they have delineated as their identity

their purpose and their and their community okay so you are actually giving them a personal attack

by trying to to intervention right on them and what happens is that because you sort of they take

it as a personal attack they actually dig in their heels and they will become actually more isolated

and they will remove themselves even further from from society and that is one of the really

tall tell signs of radicalization and one of the the behavioral indicators of somebody that

might be headed down a pathway of violence is this sort of increased isolation and because they

are getting that fuel of identity community and purpose from whatever it is what you have to

address this as as more of a hostage negotiation you have people are only as faithful as their

options dictate okay and so if you are able to showcase a different purpose or a different

community or a different identity that is accepting and and and looks more appealing they will

then take the behavior of actually removing themselves and moving them off so you don't necessarily

have to have this you know dictatorial sort of you must do this and and I'm going to you know this

is what you're going to do or this is what you're going to stop saying we're going to fire you from

your job we're going to suspend you from school we're going to etc etc they will actually feel more

in control and they will if if there is an accepting avenue or option for them they will gravitate

towards that on their own and there actually was a great social experiment that was done actually

by by Volkswagen for some weird reason and you can your listeners and viewers can probably

find it on YouTube they wanted to get people to walk more to take more steps throughout the day

and so they went to Stockholm and they had they went to the sort of the subway metro station

that had an escalator and had stairs just static stairs out of out of the out of the station

and what they did was they put these very clever sort of piano key like devices on each of the steps

so that when you stepped on them a noise much like a piano would sound and they put that right

next to the escalator and it was fascinating to watch because they didn't shut down the escalator

if they wanted to get if the goal is to get people to take more steps they could have just

shut off the escalator or they could have barred it off and instead sorry they wanted the choice

right but they didn't they offered a choice and they offered a more appealing choice

to people and you actually see in the video individual elderly individuals who probably should

be taking the escalator going and trying out to to go up the stairs and that's a perfect sort of

analogy of what I'm sort of of trying to describe is that we will our behaviors are naturally guided

by feelings not necessarily by logic okay and so intervention if you are trying to impose logic

or facts or things like that that is not going to move the needle as far as changing someone's

behavior what you have to do is you have to get to that sort of inner human core of feelings and

emotion and everything else and the reason why people will off-ramp themselves off of a pathway

of violence is the exact same lie people off-ramp themselves into taking that escalator it looked more

appealing it looked more fun they saw people who a community that was enjoying themselves and having

a purpose and so they went and followed through with with that as well and and that is one of the

the key drivers that I think within the security realm we don't take enough stock in we talk about

behaviors a lot but we don't necessarily implement things that will implement that will influence

people's feelings and and and actually get them to be proactive in their behaviors rather than

trying to create sort of barriers and and sort of hurting cattle or sheep into the direction that

we want them to go into I agree 100 percent you know people don't like to be told what to do and

like you said it comes off as an attack like you think something's wrong with me that you have to

intervene so I agree 100 percent and then you mentioned earlier on in the beginning episode tvtp

solutions as we wrap up the episode here I want you to tell us a little bit about what you do and

how you can work with different places ultimately to work on everything we've been talking about

yeah so I built tvtp solutions basically because I I wanted to you know push this this message

of prevention and so what I do is you know it doesn't matter how small or how large the organization is

I can I do sort of consulting so I can go into a school district or I can go into law enforcement

agency and mental health I can do just basic regular regular trainings so I can kind of go through

you know the pathway of violence how people become radicalized what the pathway of violence looks

like how to do sort of that intercession and negotiation to get people off how do we do the

coordination and things like that and then there's sort of like a more technical expertise that I

bring as well if people want to take it one step further we can actually develop plans or I can

take a look at the plans that are already in place whether those are response plans or even you know

low-level prevention plans and see where the gaps are or how we can augment existing things that

are already being done within the school or within the office or or municipality and then there's

sort of a more even technical granular level of things which is you'll hear we mentioned it sort

of off-handed way of behavioral threat assessment otherwise known as BTAM so you have the B for

behavioral threat assessment but the the M is management and one of the things that I don't do but

I have connections to and can be a gatekeeper towards are clinical professionals that deal with

violent ideation most people do not know that clinicians do not in this country do not get formalized

training in violent ideation yet they get training in substance abuse and suicidal ideation

and oftentimes when there is somebody who expresses violent ideation they piecemeal through those

management plans right and and try to create something there are are very

technical clinical things that have to be done for that individual to manage their violent ideation

and so I have connections to sort of experts within that I don't personally take on cases but I can

people in touch with that so consulting technical expertise and sort of you know plan building

and things like that as well as communication structures and and and what types of information

get shared and by whom and and things like that and generally taking a look at sort of what is

already in place and seeing how we can augment and sort of level out that prevention and protection

and response and and get a more holistic way of doing things and not to you know you know

to my own horn too too loud but I will say that you know I have never had a client where we

implemented you know a prevention strategy that then came back to me a couple months later or

a year later and said hey you know what this really isn't working for us people don't seem to be

responding to it we're going to go back to what we were doing before that just doesn't happen you put

it in almost instantaneously staff like it students like it the town likes it it's far more effective

it's cheaper it it focuses those sort of specialized organizations and units within the space

to really focus in on what the actual threats are and and being able to free up some of the the

less you know important stuff that is going on and people seem to generally love it and so they

don't really turn turn back on it they really double down and integrate it much like you know

my analogy of Toyota they sort of integrate it into the whole process of how they do business

and that's another thing that I one of my main goals with TVTP solutions is is to sort of make

it so that it this is just the way you do business okay so you know it's you don't have a single

point of failure where you have one really progressive individual who believes in this mission

and then all of a sudden that individual goes to another job or or retires or leaves and then the

whole network just kind of like falls apart what we want to do is we want to make this just sort

of the way in which we operate on a day-to-day basis and people can come in and keep it can go out

and the core mission of prevention stays stays going and the wheel keeps turning 100% and I want to

thank you for you know your time today for sharing this necessary conversation like I said it's not

the forefront of everyone's mind but if you have not looked into this at all as a business a

group or whatever it is unfortunately nowadays it is highly recommended to because we have seen

unfortunately a drastic increase in violence you know in targeted violence and terrorism and so

I think it never hurts to be on the safer side as long as like we said we're not creating problems

in trying to make this solution but in that prevention putting forward what we can do as a daily

practice that helps prevent this in that holistic way so I appreciate and I have a lot of respect for

what you're doing and I want to thank you for your time today well thank you so much for providing

me the opportunity to you know in your platform here and and I really really appreciate it so thank

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