Transcripts For CSPAN3 Secret Service News Conference On 2018 Mass Attacks In Public Spaces Report 20240714

Thank you, cathie. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. Earlier today, the secret service and our National Threat assessment center, or ntac, as we call it, briefed nearly 400 of our Strategic Partners on its most recent report entitled mass attacks in public space s mass attacks in public space p for the calendar year 2018. As we all know its a matter of grave concern to everyone and especially those of us in Law Enforcement. Im certainly grateful to dhs acting secretary mcaleenan joining us today, showing his support, the secret Service Continue to bring attention to this critically important sujt. Back in the 1990s the secret service which by that point had long been involved in threat investigations and Threat Management embarked on a comprehensive study as to the thinking and behavior of persons who engaged in violence against Public Officials or public figures. The results of that study set the foundation for how our agency currently conducts its own threat assessments. Moreover, in the wake of the groundbreaking report that followed back then, ntac was established nrd ee ee eed in o conduct research, training, and deliver consultation in the areas of threat assessment and the prevention of all forms of targeted violence, whether or not they were endemic to the secret services mission. Since its inception, ntac has conducted numerous studies and disseminates information on how to prevent mass attacks in public spaces, schoolbased violence, attacks on government buildings, and attacks on highprofile targets. In a moment, im going to invite ntacs chief, dr. Lena alathari, up to provide further insights on this years report and efforts of ntac, but before i did, i wanted to cover some highlights that i think are worthy of note and would bear repeating. So this years maps report as we call it focuses on 27 incidents of mass violence. Were talk bing about incidents in which three or more people were injured or killed. Incidents that were carried out in public spaces between january and december of 2018. And among the 27 incidents, were talking about events that took place at workplaces, schools, and houses of worship. In addition, the report goes on to identify common themes in the backgrounds and behaviors of the attackers. For example, half of the attackers in this report were motivated by a grievance. Twothirds had a history of Mental Health challenges. Nearly all had recently experienced a significant stressor in their lives and likewise, nearly all had previously made threatening or alarming communications either directed toward somebody or made in the presence of others. While there is no single profile of a person who commits targeted violence, this report, like so many others published by ntac, aims to assist our partners to Law Enforcement, the education arena, and so many other broader stakeholders in the community and how to better understand some of the motivations behind mass attacks, as well as the causative factors. I commend the staff of ntac for their hard work. Im proud of what theyve accomplished and i encourage everyone to take advantage of the resources theyve created, the training they deliver and the consultation they provide. All that being said, id ask the chief of ntac, dr. Lena alathari, to come up and provide further information. Good afternoon. Thank you for coming. Im going to i know you just received the report and some of the talking points, so im going to take you through some of the findings of the report. Also, as to why the secret service in this space and some of the reports that we previously published. All of the information is available on the secretservice. Gov website. So as you can see in the first slide, these are the reports. As the director mentioned, the secret service has been analyzing incidents of targeted attacks for the past 20 years. From the beginning of the exceptional case study project that set the standard for how to do threat assessment investigations, and, in fact, it was that study that coined the term, targeted violence. Since then, weve kuconducted research on targeted violence, following the tragedy at columbine, we partnered with the department of education to study School Attacks based on the same methodology that the secret service uses to investigate and study threat cases and individuals who target Public Officials. The findings of that study, the safe school initiative, set the standard for conducting threat assessments in schools. Since then, weve continued as the Center Advanced its Research Mission to study other forms of targeted violence including attacks against government and attacks against public spaces such as the report that is the focus of todays presentation. I wanted to highlight a guide that we released last year enhancing School Safety using a threat assessment model. That guide we mass produced 80,000 copies and distributed to 40,000 schools nationwide. The guide set the standard for threat assessment in schools. To provide schools with actionable steps they can take to set threat assessment protocols and keep their community safe. If we go to the next slide, today were going to be talking about the mass attacks report including the mass attacks 2018 we released last year looking at incidents in 2017 and the next report, mass attacks 2019. If we could go to the next slide, please. One more. Thank you. So some of the findings from this report to highlight is that these incidents occurred all over the country. So there were 27 attacks that occurred in the calendar year 2018. These attacks occurred in 18 different states. Some of them are highprofile incidents such as the tragedy at parkland and santa fe, but others are lesser known incidents that may not have garnered as much Media Attention but no less tragic. If we advance the slides. These are the sites, the most common sites that were targeted were place os s of work. That doesnt include just corporations and retail. That also includes hospitals, clinic, any place where we work, including a government agency. Some of the target locations were open spaces. So those occurred on sidewalks, parking lot, and other areas where there are common spaces, and as you can see, we also included three School Attacks, santa fe is the one i mentioned. There was another School Attack in North Carolina and then the parkland tragedy. So there were three high schools targeted in this timeframe. In last years report, we actually also had some elementary schools. This year, we had three high schools and a house of worship which is the tree of synagogue attack. If you advance to the next slide. So this is why we highlight the focus of our trainings on threat assessment and prevention. We know from studying these incidents that these attacks end very rapidly. As you can see, over half the attacks ended in five minutes or less. There were some attacks that did end in longer period of time, and those are really an aberrati aberration. We know that Law Enforcement response and active shooter drills are really important, but what is even more important, we want to be able to identify these individuals before they embark on that path that gets them to think violence is an option. So if you can see some of the resolution of how these go ahead. Thats fine. How these incidents ended, over half the subjects departed on their own or committed suicide. There were some incidents in which the weapon became inoperable. That, of course, includes vehicle attacks because there were some vehicle attacks in this timeframe. And two were the result of bystander intervention. One was the wafflehouse standing in which an unarmed bystander restrained the individual. Then in the last attack, the attacker just stopped on his own and tried to blend in wbut he ws discovered. Moving on to the next slide. Lets talk a little bit about the backgrounds of the perpetrators. Every report that we produce not only looks at incidents and tactics but most importantly it looks at the individuals who carried out these attacks to understand why and what behavior indicators they may have exhibited. In this report the majority were male. Almost all were male except for two. Last years report, they were all male. The average age, as you can see, the youngest was 15. That was a 15yearold sophomore that carried out an attack against their school. The oldest was 64 years old. The age ranges varied. About half had historiies of criminal history and that included violent and nonviolent crimes. And also over a third had histories of Domestic Violence. And when we tagged the cases that had Domestic Violence history, this was not just disturbance calls or emotional abuse, it was actually physically violent behavior or brandishing a weapon, so they had pretty quite serious and expene extense if histories of Domestic Violence. Moving on, in terms of symptoms of Mental Illness, we had the majority of the symptoms that we saw were depressive symptoms, paranoia, delusions and hallucinations. Those were common symptoms we see as an agency in terms of people who become fix saated on issue or cause. Twothird had Mental Health problems that deeply impacted their relationships. For some of them, it contributed to the motive of why they carried out the attack. In terms of motives, over half, and we saw this in last years mass attacks report, were retaliating for a perceived wrong that they felt was done to them related to domestic issues. So it was a grievance with a spouse or an intimate partner. It was related to workplace issues such as being fired, passed over for promotion, or other disgruntled issues related to the work environment. Or it was personal issues such as losing a video game competition because there was one attacker that targeted that. Or getting into an argument with a manager of a Retail Establishment and then coming back and carrying out a mass attack. So as you can see, the motives varied. Only two incidents had an actual ideological component to their motive and that was an antiabortion perpetrator who carried out an attack against a planned parenthood clinic and also the attack at the synagogue stemming from white supremacist beliefs. Moving on. So why do we study these incidents . For us as an agency, for the secret service, our numberone mission is to mitigate harm to any of our protected interests. And we work very closely with Community Partners to do so. But in terms of the National Threat assessment center, as the director mentioned, we have a congressional authorization to our mission. Not only to enhance our own agencys security and protective mission, but also the communities. In terms of preventing attacks against schools, preventing attacks against workplaces, and so on. So the key mission to that is identifying individuals early on before they get that idea to carry out an attack. So if you move through this, the u. S. Secret Service Threat Assessment model for the last 20 years has been refined to adapted to prevent Workplace Violence, School Shootings and other attacks in the community. The first step of that model, we want to be able to identify individuals. So similar to how we identify individual, we want to be able to identify these individuals in the community. Moving on. Okay. So this is how they come to our attention. How do people raise concern about someone who might be at risk of engaging in an attack or someone who might just be i illiciting concerning behavior . They selfidentify, bring attention to themselves, they email for us, theyd show up at a protected site or the white house, or we get it from our partners, our partners in the community, federal, state, and local agencies, Mental Health professionals, local agencies that might be dealing with that individual, then they raise concern. Members of the community. Obviously, now with the advent of technology, theres a lot of postings on social media website, game forums, chat rooms, even comments on aing a or displaying a really significant inappropriate interest in one of our agencys protectees and thats what would cause us to launch an investigation to assess whether this person really poses a threat. Similar to in the community. A lot of schools are now being very proactive. A lot of communities and states are putting threat assessment programs and protocols in place so people can report concerning individuals, so that person can get the help they need before they become to think of violence as an option. Moving on to the next slide. Now that weve identified the individual, the next phase of these threat assessment programs and objectives is to be able to gather information from multiple sources to assess does this person pose a risk of harm and what kind of risk do they pose . So we use a Systems Approach. What we call our investigations are proactive. Its our number one investigative mission. So the minute we find out about somebody, we want to be out there gathering information. For the most part, the individual is going to be the first person that were going to interview because we want to find out why did they engage there the behavior that elicited concern . And what are they trying to achieve . Then we contact the individuals around them and do a whole of community holistic approach to prevention. Were talking to families. Were talking to coworkers. We want to be able to understand what is the situation in life that caused that person to illicit concern . Same in a School Threat assessment environment. Same in a company that has a Workplace Violence prevention program. You want to be gathering information about an individual from multiple sources to get a clear picture of whats going on in their life. Because we know that some people may act differently at work. They may act differently in the home. So you want to be able to gather a perspective on that person and corroborate that information from multiple sources. Moving on. Keep going. So some of these investigating things that we look for, what should someone be doing when they get someone in the Community Whos of concern . What should they be looking for . These key themes to investigations have been part of our investigative protocols for 20 years. Since the exceptional case study project was first initiated by the agency in the late 1990s. Since then, due to the number of reports and the number of attacks that we studied, from out there doing trainings for the community, from identifying best practices, weve identified a number of new themes that are part now of our investigative protocol. That includes behavior changes, the persons environment. Can we advance the slide, please . Yeah. Behavior changes in the person one back. Thank you. Whether that person is engaged in behavior changes because were seeing these behaviors in the new incidents of attacks that were studying, are they having interpersonal difficulties with coworkers, family members, schools, other students and so on at the school . Are they having failed aspirations . Has there been Significant Impact from having a failed aspiration on their life . Weve seen that quite significantly in the report that we released today in terms of perceived failures and what this individual was going through. Are there a lack of consequences to some of the behaviors . Some of these individuals have illicited concern for behavior that was quite concerning but they may not have illicited the consequences to reprimand that. Maybe they did not the person did not want to press charges against them. Or maybe in a workplace environment, theyve been causing a lot of conflicts with coworkers, threatening them, but a manager is not acting on that. So these are type of things that weve seen lately in some of these incidents. Obviously, hindsight is 20 20 for us to understand these incidents, but this is why were out there training on this because we want to provide the community with what behaviors that might illicit concern. And the behavior s are not necessarily indicative of violence. For us at the secret service, we advocate early intervention. Identifying these behaviors that may set a low threshold of concern. So sudden or dramatic changes in behavior, maybe more absenteeism, not showing to work. Maybe their rhetoric. Maybe theyre accessing sites that are more violent prone. Before it gets to the sort of the obvious concern in behavioral planning, purchasing a weapon. We want to identify individuals early to deter them off that path. Advance to the next slide. So once weve collected all this information, then you want to do an assessment of risk. And when we assess someone who comes to our attention, sometimes we dont think really theyre a risk to our protected interest, but our investigation may uncover a risk to a school. Maybe theyre making comments about a neighbor theyre disgruntled with. Maybe theyre making comments about their manager and workplace. So we want to make sure that we are communicating our concerns to the local to the local police department. So our field Office Agents who carry out these assessments and investigations work very closely with our Law Enforcement partners. If we do decide that there is a risk, then we need to manage that risk. So we want to find out what can we do to create a situation thats less prone to violence . What can we do to lessen an impact of whats going on in that persons life, and what can we do to take away the motive they may have for engaging in a harmful act . Each case is different. Each case is individualized. We need to make sure were garnering our resources to address which is why we work so closely with families and those around the individual. Advance to the next slide, please. These are some Management Strategies we use as an agency. We dont have a magic wand. We work in the community with everyone else. Field Office Agents are working closely with their Mental Health centers that are close by them. They work closely with local Law Enforcement. They are working to address that persons needs. The numberone thing that is important is to build rapport with individuals. Build rapport with the people around them. Because those are the people that we are concerned about and we want to make sure that their families are also getting the support that they need. Move on to the fnext slide. Tieing it all together in terms of the findings of this report. Not every person was experiencing Mental Health symptoms and Mental Illness is not a barometer of dangerousness, but if someone is mentally ill and theyre having all these other issues going on in their life, then we want to make sure theyre getting the care they need. Some individuals may not have a psychiatric disorder but they may be experiencing emotional issues. They may have anger issues. They may have an inability to handle stress and conflict and so on. So we pro voiding them the resources they need as well. The number one important thing, wed like to encourage the community to share their concerns about individuals, whether its a loved one, a classmate, someone that theyre working with, because we want to make sure that person is getting the help. But if the community is sharing their concern, then its really incumbent on the person in authority to act on those concerns. Whether its Law Enforcement, a workplace manager, a school administrator. We want to make sure if were encourae Encouraging Community members to share concerns that were being proactive about acting on those, getting that help they need, yu using that Key Secret Service Systems Approach to gather information and manage that risk. So thats all i had in terms of the report. Thank you for being here. If you have any questions, cathie thank you. So well open it up for q as right now. Does anybody have any questions about the report . Whats really striking about both years is the similarities in the major findings. What do you think what kind of intervention is not being done, do you think, to make an inroad, or inroads, into what might be causing these attacks . So weve seen this before. I mean, there are challenges to information reporting, of course, but i have to say that even in these cases, once we delved into the backgrounds, there were instances where people did report their concern and thats where we are encouraging communities to make sure that they act on that concern. That if Law Enforcement is getting report about an individual to make sure that they are considering it from a threat assessment perspective. If a School Manager is getting report from other coworkers or employees about their concern for that individual, that they are acting on it, but communities need those resources. And they need the training to be able not to only recognize the behavior but what to do to follow up on that assessment piece. And thats what the secret service does. Were out there doing these trainings. Were encouraging information sharing. Were encouraging people to understand what are the warning signs and what can they do about it . Hi. Im kim from politico. I was wondering if you could please elaborate a little bit more about what you found specifically about the School Shootings, a little bit more specifically about the perpetrators, some common theme, also just some lessons learned. Sure, so there were only three high schools targeted in this report. I have to say that we are also currently right now as part of our response to redoubling our efforts after the tragedy at parkland, and also in support of the federal commission on School Safety, we are doing a new research School Attack Research Study right now. We are in the midst of coding those cases. So we i cant anecdotedally talk about those findings and, you know, there were three incidents in this report and some of the commonalities weve seen is that these kids were experiencing some issues and problems in their lives. Some, believe it or not, still bullying. That is still a big thing that were seeing in some of these instances. And not necessarily they may not necessarily being bullied but its their perception, right, its also about the perception of what theyre going through. Weve also seen that they illicited concerning behavior for some their actions. Weve seen that they posted content indicating maybe not necessarily a direct, overt, threat, but indicating that they may have an interest in school shooters, inappropriate interest in other incidents of mass violence. So those are some of the common themes that weve seen particularly in this report and these attacks. You spoke are you seeing a lot of warning signs on line presently . What are you going about warning signs that were missed in the past . Are you speaking in terms of the research or in terms of the actual investigation the agency does . Both. In terms of the research, right now, for example, the School Attack study that were doing, when we first did the first school study, there was no social media back then. That study was released in 2002. So right now, a big component of that study were looking at is social media. I dont have the data yet because we have not finished it, but i can toell yoou we are seeg some concerning posts. Obviously, we get a lot of information from concerned citizens online. Sometimes its a threatening interest, but sometimes its inappropriate interest. One of the findings weve seen in previous reports for people who target Public Officials is they dont always make a direct threat, so were not just concerned with people who make direct threats. Were also interested in the people who are showing fixsations. Weve seen this in this report, they with fixated on a cause, an issue, a person, and that behavior escalates over time. So some of the things to look out for, if you are monitoring social media, if you are getting these reports, is to look at the context of those postings but also to use that Systems Approach to be able to gather information from multiple sources to see, is this an aberration, or is this a theme throughout their life . Because if they are writing about it online, theyre talking about it to people as well. One of the attacks brought up in this report is the parkland shooting. The fbi had said they missed tips related to that shooter. How have you worked with the fbi related to that attack and streamlining their own efforts to catch these tips that theyre getting moving forward . Right. Absolutely. So weve actually been working closely with them. Following the parkland tragedy, there was a Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing that i testified along with the Deputy Director of the fbi and one of the things that we discussed following that hearing is having ntac train the Call Center Operators on how to identify, assess and manage similar to the secret service approach. I think one of the things that have to give it to the fbi, theyve been very proactive at looking at streamlining their processes. They get a lot of tips. You know, obviously, their jurisdiction is much wider than ours, so, but we wanted to teach them in terms of not only just focusing on threats, focusing on the concerning behavior. So we actually sent staff to the call center in West Virginia and we trained all shifts of the Call Center Operators and we also helped kind of review some of their protocols as well. Theyve been very active and engaged with us as an agency. You said your goal is to mitigate harm and that the aim of this report is to help prevent future attacks when possible. Yet, these still continue to happen. Why . Theres not a single solution to everything, and i think the more that were out there training and the more that were out there engaging with communities, and im telling you, more and more states are being very proactive now about the threat assessment process and they want to be able to establish protocols within their community, Law Enforcement, Mental Health professionals, social services, schools, workplaces, are working together not only to share information but to provide each other with resources. Ill give you an example. A few months ago, we were contacted by the office of the attorney general for the state of wisconsin. They created a new School Safety office, and what they wanted to do, while wisconsin doesnt have legislation mandating threat assessments in schools, they wanted to be able to provide the community with something. They drafted threat assessment protocols that us and ntac reviewed very closely, helped them come up with questions. We even went down and participated in the press conference to roll it out and we participated in two national School Safety conferences in the state of wisconsin. So i think the more that we share information, the more that were out there being able to provide the communities with the secret service approach, i think it will help really alleviate and hopefully prevent even one incident from happening. One is too many. That was a portion of a Briefing Held by the secret Service Department of Homeland Security yesterday on mass attacks in 2018 around the country. Were back live over on the house side of the capitol for a hearing of an oversight committ subcommittee. Theyre talking here about immigrant children. Theyve been at it for a couple of hours. Theyre taking a brief break down while members vote on the house floor on a defense policy bill. So we will continue with more live coverage of this hearing when the votes on the house floor are finished. We expect that in the next, i dont know, 10 to 15 to 20 minutes. Something like that. In the meantime, we are going to show you a portion of the testimony earlier today. Its a guatemalan citizen seeking asylum in the u. S. Her name is yazmim juarez. She takes about leaving the medical facility and her daughters medical condition worsening where she eventually died in a hospital several days later. Here is that testimony right now. [ speaking Foreign Language ] [ speaking Foreign Language ] translator i was terrified by the time our plane landed. We took mariee to a pediatrician as soon as we could and just a few hours later to the emergency room. She was admitted to the intensive care unit with a viral lung infection. Over the next six weeks, she was transferred to another childrens hospital. My little girl suffered horrible pain. She was poked and prodded and eventually needed a ventilator to help her breathe. I couldnt even hold her or hug her or console her when she asked for her mother. It was a terrible pain to see my child in a situation and circumstance like this one, and as a mother, i wish that i could have taken her place. [ speaking Foreign Language ] l translator all of the hard work of these doctors came too late. My maria died on what is mothers day in my country. When i walked out of the hospital that day all i had with me was a piece of paper with marias hand prints in pink paint that the staff had created for me. It was the only thing i had left. And the nurses had given it to me as a mothers day gift. [ speaking Foreign Language ] [ speaking Foreign Language ] translator im here today because i want to put an end to this. It is very hard to see so many children in front of them to be my daughter. And to think that i will never see her again or hug her, or enjoy being with her, or tell her just how much i love her. It is very hard. You have no idea how hard it is to move forward without my little girl. Its like theyer to out a piece of my heart, like theyer to out my soul. Im suffering every day. It is difficult to get up and move forward without her. I wanted to have a better like for her and a Better Future and work hard so that she could keep growing the way that she was. But now we wont be able to do that because she is gone. Im here today to put an end to this, and that we not allow anymore children to suffer and die in in way. Maria could be here with us, but she is not. Next month she would have been three years old, that is a very painful date for me. Its painful to not have her with me and show her what i feel, and say what i want for her. I have no words to describe that