Since the tragedy at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, OR most every news anchor, parent, student, education leader and government leader has been asking the same question…is there a SOLUTION to prevent future tragedies like what happened at Umpqua Community College?
The answer is YES, tragedies can be prevented and are being prevented. A real proven SOLUTION does exist and it is proven in the real world by real organizations.
The SOLUTION for PREVENTION involves a real-time community-wide effort of continuously collecting, assessing and connecting the dots. The SOLUTION for prevention requires proven tools like those found in the “Community-based Threat Assessment, Incident Management and Prevention Services platform” to make sure the right information (like always present pre-incident indicators) are getting to the right people in the right places at the right time so the right actions can be taken BEFORE at-risk individuals escalate to the point of executing their plans.
Based on hundreds of post-event reports, extensive research and overwhelming evidence-based data, Awareity created the “community-based threat assessment, incident management and prevention services” (TIPS) platform. The community-based and community-wide threat assessment, incident management and prevention services platform is significantly different from conventional department-based, silo-based and organization-based case management systems organizations and communities are using today.
Awareity’s community-wide prevention platform (TIPS) is significantly different by design because over and over again post-event reports expose how the right people from the right community-based organizations (schools, colleges, law enforcement, mental health, health care, government entities, businesses and other community resources) were not aware of the always present “pre-incident indicators” that were observed and even reported by one or more individuals.
Awareity’s community-wide prevention platform (TIPS) equips organizations and communities and TAT (threat assessment team) members with the right tools to “collect the dots, assess the dots and connect the dots” AND securely share the right information with the right people in the right places at the right time so they can do the right things to pro-actively and pre-actively (using data to identify patterns and trends) intervene and prevent incidents, violence and tragedies of all types.
The community-based threat assessment, incident management and prevention platform solution is significantly different because the solution focuses on PREVENTING…NOT REACTING.
Awareity’s community-wide threat assessment, incident management and prevention services platform also equips organizations and communities with the right tools to prevent soaring liabilities and costly lawsuits. There are numerous clear and obvious validations as well as requirements for a separate, central, secure community-wide prevention platform (separate from student records systems, employee records systems and departmental case management systems). The validations can be found in multiple regulations and standards such as those defined in FERPA, in the American National Standards Institute Workplace Violence Prevention & Intervention standard (co-authored by SHRM and ASIS) and in Commonwealth of Virginia’s state law covering threat assessment teams and threat assessment records.
Real Prevention Requires Different Solutions
While President Obama, Bill O’Reilly and numerous others correctly suggest mass shootings are becoming routine and similar patterns exist with shooter profiles, their suggestions for prevention solutions are slow and reactive and they are not proving to be very effective.
My bigger concern is that if people put their faith in and focus on stricter gun control and stricter penalties…people will not take proactive actions to get in front of the at-risk individuals who present real and immediate threats in our communities TODAY! Gun control and stricter penalties are NOT quick solutions, we need leaders who will acknowledge the data and real-life statistics which reveal mass shootings and violence are on the increase and communities need immediate and proven prevention solutions today!
In the real world we live in today, with 300 million guns that are not going away, Threat Assessment Teams (TATs) need to assume everyone has access to a gun, which is a real-world validation for why proven “community-based prevention platform solutions” are needed right now!
Politicizing a prevention solution is a really bad idea because politics divide communities…if one political party endorses a solution, other political parties will argue and debate against it. Communities need immediate proven prevention solutions, because their only option at this point is to continue reacting to incidents and tragedies which is unacceptable when proven prevention solutions exist.
To prevent mass shootings, the rising threat of homegrown violent extremists and increasing violence in our communities, the solution involves equipping people with the right tools and a proven “community-based prevention platform solution” to connect people, teams and resources and to connect all the right dots more effectively and more immediately.
Definition of Insanity
Everyone knows the definition of insanity – doing the same things over and over and expecting different results – but knowing it and saying it is one thing and actually taking different actions is key. Real-world leaders are willing to take a different path than the status quo. To achieve different results (preventing vs. reacting), organizational and community leaders need proven community-based prevention solutions, not more reactive security products and more silo-based systems…and overwhelming data provides all the validation a leader needs.
To demonstrate reactive insanity really exists, all we have to do is look at what happens after every mass shooting tragedy… leaders in schools, colleges, organizations and government talk about the same reactive topics, debate the same reactive laws and implement more of the same reactive security products, so why would anyone expect different results?
Still not convinced on reactive insanity? Taking a more detailed look at what happens after mass shootings reveals how some leaders talk about and then add more laws and penalties that are reactive to an incident or tragedy. Other leaders talk about and add more security access products and security alarms designed to react to the threat already standing at your front door. Other leaders talk about and add more cameras that react by recording forensics to be used after the incident. Other leaders talk about and add more re-active shooter training which is obviously reacting to the shooter. Schools, colleges and organizations (and military bases too) have made significant investments (billions of $$) in reactive security solutions… yet the evidence is overwhelming that enormous investments in reactive security and laws are not delivering the return on investment and the results people want…people want incidents and tragedies to be prevented.
At the 2015 ASIS International Conference held in Anaheim on Sept 27 – Oct 1, the ASIS School Safety and Security Council presented a pre-conference program on “Developing a School Security and Safety Plan for the Next Five Years”. The ASIS Daily newspaper featured the pre-conference program and the following comment I made regarding the investigative report on Sandy Hook and pre-incident indicators that may have pointed to Adam Lanza’s intentions to carry out a massacre:
“Think of this as a puzzle. If we were to hand a puzzle piece to each one of you as you walked in the room, if you just looked at the one piece you may not be able to figure out the bigger picture,” he explained. “But if you’re all on the same threat assessment team, there’s a pretty good chance you could figure out what it is.”
https://sm.asisonline.org/Pages/Preseminar-Programs-Leverage-Learning.aspx
After each and every tragedy, we also see and hear the same “comment” from leaders and experts who say “the organization did not connect the dots”. They say this because after every tragedy, media investigators and post-event reports reveal numerous “dots and pieces of the puzzle” were observed and even reported. But these pre-incident indicators (dots and pieces of the puzzle) were not collected into a central, secure, community-based prevention platform which means the “dots” were not assessed by a community-wide Threat Assessment Team (TAT) and the “dots” were not connected. Instead, the “dots” were scattered across multiple individuals, departments, silos, teams, locations, organizations, social media sites and the community.
These same gaps, silos and disconnects are identified time and time again, making it painfully obvious that a different solution is needed to achieve different results.
The different solution is the community-based threat assessment, incident management and prevention services platform. The different solution from Awareity has been successfully equipping organizations to prevent incidents and tragedies for over 5 years as you can see from this article below:
https://www.awareity.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/NLECTC-Article.pdf
As more evidence-based data is gathered, more post-incident reports are released and more client feedback is shared, Awareity is continuously improving the community-based threat assessment, incident management and prevention services platform with new tools and new enhancements. Awareity has a significant advantage in providing the most comprehensive and valuable prevention tools to transform organizations from “reactive damage control mode” to “pro-active and pre-active prevention mode”. Click here to see what a difference you and your leadership can create!