School Threat Assessment

The current news seems to be full of reports of threats against schools. A search of the WRAL website for stories on school threats reveals at least five discrete stories on threats against North Carolina schools in May alone. How can schools and law enforcement be prepared to respond to, and perhaps even prevent, threats against student safety? The National Threat Assessment Center of the United States Secret Service (NTAC) has been researching that topic for over 20 years. The results are consistent. Schools that have an effective threat assessment structure in place, casting a wide net to effectively identify youth along a continuum of need and offering a range of responses, are best positioned to address threats and prevent school violence. There is No One Profile of a School Attacker In 2019, the NTAC published Protecting America’s Schools, a study of 41 incidents of targeted attacks at K – 12 schools between 2008 and 2017. That study found that there was not a singular profile of an attacker or of the type of school where attacks occurred. The NTAC subsequently studied 67 averted plots by students or former students to attack K-12 schools. The results of that study were published in 2021 in Averting Targeted School Violence. While these studies did not find one profile for people who plan and carry out targeted school violence, they did identify some common themes among the population of plotters and attackers. These include that Retaliation for grievances was a common motive, especially grievances [...]