The social media posts, allegedly written by a former teacher in the Northside Independent School District, started with a demand for money he claimed he was owed.
Over the course of 48 hours, the profanity-laced posts became progressively more alarming. At one point, police later wrote in court records, Dalton Austin Brown posted three photos showing a total of seven handguns and four semi-automatic rifles.
“I hope you sleep good buddy,” Brown, 28, allegedly wrote on Facebook, addressing the post to NISD Superintendent Brian Woods. “Time (sic) running out.”
Within hours, a detective with the San Antonio Police Department — using information gathered by a police officer with Northside — filed a warrant for Brown’s arrest. It was signed by a judge and Brown was arrested later that day.
The quick and coordinated response was part of a new initiative, called the Triweekly Threat Assessment Group, that involves officials from more than 10 local, state and national law enforcement agencies who meet three times a week to evaluate possible attacks in Bexar County.
“This is not traditional policing,” said Sgt. Tina Baron with San Antonio police, one of the agencies involved. “Is something arrestable or not? That’s traditional policing. Our approach is different, in that we’re preventative in nature.”
The concept might seem commonplace — but that’s not necessarily true.
While partnerships among law enforcement agencies have existed for decades, there wasn’t a formal process in place — at least in Bexar County — for police officers across jurisdictions to quickly and efficiently share information and evaluate possible threats.
About a year ago, that began to change.
Related: Former NISD teacher accused of making threats against superintendent
In October 2019, a group of local, state and national law enforcement agencies at the Southwest Texas Fusion Center, an intelligence-gathering hub, started meeting to identify and assess possible public safety threats.
The approach was based on a model developed, in part, by the FBI to prevent mass attacks, such as school shootings. It has since been expanded to identify and address other forms of targeted violence, including stalking and terrorism.
The team in San Antonio is the first of its kind in Texas, officials say.
In May, the city of San Antonio, which manages the Fusion Center, received a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to pay for new equipment, additional training for team members, and increased overtime to re-review older cases.
Now, the group meets three times a week — albeit virtually these days — to identify possible acts of violence and determine the likelihood of an attack. From January to October, the group has reviewed about 350 cases, according to Baron.
“The FBI doesn’t have the resources to handle every threat in this city,” said Christopher Combs, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Antonio Division. “That’s why this initiative is so important. It really is a community effort.”
In some situations, the suspect was not arrested but redirected to other community resources, such as the Center for Health Care Services, the county’s largest provider of mental health and substance abuse services. A representative from the center regularly attends the meetings.
“A lot of this is about helping people,” Combs said. “It’s not just about arresting people.”
FBI framework
Combs, who previously helped oversee the FBI’s response to emergencies nationwide, said threat assessments have been used for decades, starting with the U.S. Secret Service.
But it wasn’t until 2013, Combs said, that the idea really began to gain traction. A year earlier, 20 students and six school employees were shot and killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.
Sam Ukeiley, a special agent in the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit, which researches and analyzes the behavior of perpetrators, said many individuals signal what they plan to do.
For example, a 2018 FBI study evaluating 63 mass shooters between 2000 and 2013 found the killers displayed several “concerning behaviors” before attacking. Those include: suicidal statements or behaviors; recent acquisition of weapons and tactical gear; drastic changes in appearance, such as a shaved head; intense fascination with previous acts of mass violence; and preparation of a farewell statement or manifesto.
Ukeiley emphasized that no single behavior can forecast what an individual would do. A multitude of factors and conditions must be evaluated.
On ExpressNews.com: School shooting survivors, families share lessons with education leaders
Combs said many of those warning signs were noticeable prior to previous acts of mass violence, including the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007 that left 32 people dead.
Two years earlier, the shooter, Seung Hui Cho, was briefly held at a psychiatric hospital after a roommate feared he was suicidal. After his release, a judge determined that Cho was a danger to himself and ordered him to undergo outpatient treatment.
But after 2005, Cho had no known contact with any mental health services. Virginia Tech counselors later said they didn’t know that Cho had been ordered to undergo outpatient treatment.
“Had all the parties sat around a table and discussed this man’s behavior, they might have realized that he posed a big threat,” Combs said. “They would have realized, ‘Oh my god, this guy is on the edge.’”
Ukeily said it’s important to note that perpetrators of mass violence typically don’t snap. They have a grievance and they take time to consider, plan and prepare their attack, he said.
“A shooter doesn’t snap one day and kill 20 people,” Combs said. “So often, after an act of mass violence, people say, ‘Oh, I’m not surprised.’”
“That’s why it’s so important for folks to come forward if they witness unusual behaviors like these. I think almost every active shooter situation in the United States could have been prevented had someone said something earlier.”
S.A. takes action
Ukeiley said local officials recognized the need for a threat assessment team in early 2018 after 26 people were killed and 20 others were wounded a year earlier at a church in Sutherland Springs.
Less than a month after the shooting, the Air Force Inspector General found that the service had failed to report Devin Kelley’s criminal convictions on domestic violence charges to the FBI, as required by federal law.
Kelley also had a documented history of other behavioral problems in the Air Force. He was given a bad-conduct discharge after serving time in military prison on the domestic violence conviction.
From there, the timing to create a threat assessment team in San Antonio fell into place, officials said.
In 2019, the Texas Legislature passed a bill that required each school district to establish a multidisciplinary threat assessment team to identify and evaluate possible acts of violence on campuses. SAPD began working with several local school districts on implementing such teams.
Around the same time, SAPD’s Mental Health Unit — which was previously a part of the Bike Patrol Unit — moved to the Southwest Texas Fusion Center.
“We were all under the same roof,” said Baron, a supervisor at the intelligence hub. “We were going with a lot of meetings together. We noticed that there were a lot of people who both of our teams were dealing with.”
On ExpressNews.com: Gov. Abbott wants to identify mass shooters before they strike. Researchers are skeptical.
At that point, officials at the Fusion Center reached out and asked about the FBI’s threat assessment model.
While the Fusion Center had been doing threat assessments to some degree — representatives from multiple agencies are stationed there to gather intelligence and manage real-time security threats — the group decided they wanted to create a formal framework using “best practices.”
Together, they established up a key group of members, including local, state and national law enforcement officials, representatives from mental health facilities and school administrators.
They also set up a way for local police officers to refer cases to the group for review and a rating system to determine the severity of threats.
Quickly, officials said, the benefits became apparent.
“The magic happens when we’re all in the room and we’re all checking our separate databases,” said Randy Reyes, an arson investigator with the San Antonio Fire Department and a member of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. “It really opens doors.”
Success stories
Officials said it’s hard to quantify the group’s success, as it’s impossible to gauge if an attack would have happened had the group not intervened.
And while criminal justice experts say increased vigilance by police about warning signs can certainly prevent violence, they warn that it’s hard to say definitively whether threat assessments work, in part because mass shootings are statistically rare, making it difficult to draw conclusions about them.
Still, officials believe the group has done important work — ultimately preventing some acts of targeted violence.
Reyes and Baron said the collaboration particularly helped in instances where a suspect was repeatedly in and out of the criminal justice system.
“We had one individual that two different agencies were having trouble with who was referred to the group,” Baron said. “We ended up with five agencies who had dealt with this one person ... Had we not sat in the same room and talked about it, we wouldn’t have known.”
Another advantage of the new team, members said, is that it’s easier to keep track of suspects who might otherwise get lost in the labyrinth of the criminal justice system.
Sgt. Mike Davis, an investigator with the Bexar County District Attorney’s Office, said the group’s thrice weekly meetings help him identify cases that need to take priority.
“The District Attorney’s Office handles on average 60,000 cases annually,” Davis said. “One of the priorities for this administration is to prioritize violent cases and prevent violence. That’s why this group is so critical.”
Davis said he passes along key information from the meetings to prosecutors who can’t attend regularly.
From there, he offers suggestions to prevent violence — such as prohibiting a suspect from having a gun — or get help by connecting the person, if appropriate, to mental health services.
Alternatively, a judge can require a suspect to take medication as prescribed.
“It’s hard to know how many times we have helped a person or prevented an attack,” Davis said. “But we know this group is actively intervening in acts of violence. That’s our role, to safeguard the community.”
eeaton@express-news.net
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‘Not traditional policing’: San Antonio initiative aims to prevent mass violence, targeted attacks - San Antonio Express-News
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