Critically important subject. Back in the 1990s, the secret service which by that point had long been involved in threat investigations and Threat Management embarked on a study as to the thinking and behavior of persons who engage in the violence against public figures or officials. The results set a foundation for how we investigate threats. Ntac was established to more bradley consider research, provide training and consultation in areas of threat and all forms of violence, whether or not they have endemic to the secret services mission. Since its foundation, ntac investigates studies. Attacks on government buildings and high profile targets. In a moment im going to invier ntacs chief to provide further insights on this years report and the efforts of ntac. But before i did i wanted to cover highlights i think are worthy of note and would bear repeating this. Years report focused on 27 incidents of mass violence, incidents in which three Megan Rapinoe people are killed. Incidents that were carried out in public spaces between january and december of 2018, and aamong the 27 incidents we are 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 background of the attackers. Half of the attackers were motivated by a grievance. Two thirds had Mental Health challenges. Nearly all experienced a significant stress sort in their lives and likewise all made threatening or alarming communications directed towards somebody or made in the presence of others. While there is no single profile of the person who commits targeted violence, this report, like so many others published by ntac aimed to help people in Law Enforcement and broader stakeholders in the community on how to understand better the motivations behind attacks as well as the causative factors. I commend the staff of ntac for their hard work. Im proud of what they accomplished and i encourage everyone to take advantage of the resources they created the training they deliver and the consultation they provide. All that being said, i ask the chief of ntac 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 we have previously published. All the information is available on the secret service. Gov website. 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 last 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 that was that study that coined the term targeted violence. Since then we have ukt canned research on other incidents. Following tragedy we partnered with the department of education to study School Attacks based on the same methodology that the secret service uses for threat cases and the individuals that target public individuals. The findings on that study set the standard for conducting threat assessments in schools. Since then we continued as the study advanced its Research Mission to study other forms of targeted violence, including attacks against government and other spaces such as the report thats the focus of todays investigation. I wanted to highlight a guide that we released last year, enhancing School Safety using a model that guide we mass produced 80,000 copies and distributed to 40,000 schools nationwide. The guide set the standard for safety in schools. It provides schools with actionable steps they can take to set threat assessment protocols and keep their community safe. Today we are going to be talking about the mass attacks report, including 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. Some of the findings from this report to highlight is that these incidents occurred all over the country. There were 27 attacks that occurred in the calendar year 2018. These attacks occurred in 18 different states. Some of them are high profile incidents, such as the tragedy at parkland and santa fe, but others are lesser known incidents that may not have garnered media attention, but no less tragic. These are the sites. The most common sites targeted were places of work. That doesnt include corporations, that includes hospitals, clinics, any place we work, including a government agency. Some of the target locations were open spaces. Those occurred on sidewalks, parking lot, and other areas where there are common spaces. 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 time frame. In last years report we also had some elementary schools. This year, three high schools and a house of warship, which is the tree of synagogue attack. 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 the incidents these attacks end very rapidly. Over half the attacks end in the five minutes or less. There were some attacks that did end in a longer period of time, and those are really an aberration. We know that Law Enforcement responds and active shooter drills are important, but whats more important is we want to be able to identify these individuals before they embark on that path that gets them to think violence is an option. If you can see some of the was lesion of how these incidents ended. Over half, the subject 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 vehicle attacks in this time frame and two were as a result of bystander intervention. One was the waffle house shooting in which a bystander restrained the individual. Then in the last attack, the attacker stopped on his own and tried to blend in, but he was discovered. Moving on to the next slide. Lets talk about the backgrounds of the perpetrators. Every report 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 two. Last years report was all male. The youngest was 15. That was a sophomore that carried an attack against the school. The oldest was 64 years old. The age ranges varied. Half had histories of criminal history. That included violent and nonviolent crimes. Also, over a third had histories of Domestic Violence. When we tagged, coded the cases that had Domestic Violence history, this wasnt disturbance calls or Emotional Abuse it was physically violent behavior or brandishing a weapon, so serious extensive histories of Domestic Violence. Moving on, symptoms of Mental Illness, the majority of the symptoms were depressive symptoms, paranoia. Those are symptoms we see in people who become fixated on a cause. In this report they had Mental Health issues that impacted relationships, whether they elicited concerns. For some of them it contributed to motive of why they carried out the attack. In term of motives, more than half for retaliating for a perceived wrong they felt was done to them for domestic issues, so a grievance the with a spouse or an intimate partner, related to workplace issues, being fired, passed over for promotion or disgruntled issues related to the Workplace Environment, or it was personal issues such as losing a video game competition, there was one attacker who targeted that, or getting into an argument with the manager of a retail environment and then coming back and carrying out an attack. Only two incidents had an ideology c ideological component to their motive. That was antiabortion who carried out an attack at the planned parenthood and then at the free of life synagogue carrying out white supremacist beliefs. For us as an agency, the secret service, our Number One Mission so to mitigate harm to any of our protected interests and work closely with Community Partners to do so. In terms of the National ThreatAssessment Center we have a 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, adapted to prevent Workplace Violence, School Shootings and other attacks in the community. The first step is we want to be able to identify an individual some similar to how we identify individuals, we want to be able to identify these individuals in the community. Moving on. This is how they come to our attention. How do people raise concern about someone who might be at risk of engaging an attack or someone who might be eliciting concerning behavior . They either selfidentify, where they bring attention to themselves. They email, for us they would show up at a protected site, a for white house, or we get it from our partners in the community, federal agencies, Mental Health professionals, local agencies that might be dealing with that individual and then they raise concern. Members of the community. Obviously now with the advent of technology, theres a lot of postings on social media websites, game forums, chat rooms, even comments on a news article. Someone may be making a threat or displaying a really significant inappropriate interest in one of our agencys protectees and that would cause us to launch an investigation to swlee this person poses a threat. Similar to in the community, the lot of schools are being proactive. Communities and states are putting threat assessment programs 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 we have 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 . We use a Systems Approach. Our investigations are proactive. Its our number one investigative mission. 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 we interview. We want to find out, why did they engage in the behavior that elicited concern and what did they want to achieve . Then we look at the individuals around them. We are talking to families, coworkers. We want to be able to understand what is the situation in life that caused that person to elicit concern . Same in a School Threat assessment environment, same in a company that has a Workplace Violence program. You want to gather information from multiple sources to get a clear picture of whats going on in their life. We know some people may act differently at work, differently in the home. You want to be able to gatter a perspective on that person and corroborate from multiple sources. So some of these investigative things 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 hard part of our protocols for 20 years since the exceptional case study project was first initiated by the agency in the late 1990s. Since then, due of the number of reports and number of attacks that we have studied, from out there doing trainings for the community, from identifying best practices, we have identified a number of new themes that are part now of our investigative protocol. That includes behavior changes in a persons environment. Can we advance the slide . Behavior changes in the persons one back. Thank you. Whether that person has engaged in behavior changes. We are seeing these behaviors in the new incidents of attacks we are studying. Are they having difficulties with coworkers, fam members, schools, other students at the school. Are they having failed aspirations . Significant impact from having a failed as praipiration on their . We see that significantly in the report we released today. Are there a lack of consequences to some of the behaviors . Some of these individuals have elicited concerns for behavior that was quite concerning but they may not have elicited the consequences to reprimand that. Maybe the person did not want to press charges against them, or maybe in a Workplace Environment they have been causing conflicts with coworkers, threatening them, but a manager is not acting on that. These are the types of things we are seeing lately. Hindsight 20 20 for us to understand the incidents. But this is why we are training on this because we want to train the community with what behaviors might elicit concerns. Its not indicative of violence. We advocate early intervention. Identifying the behaviors that may set a low threshold or concern. Sudden or dramatic changes in behavior. Maybe more absenteeism, not showing up to work, more rhetoric, maybe theyre axing sites. Accessing a weapon. We want to identify individuals early. Once we have collected all this information, then you want to do an assessment of risk. When we assess someone who comes to our attention, maybe theyre not a risk to our protected but maybe theyre making comments about a neighbor theyre disgruntled with, their manager and workplace. We want to make sure we are communicating our concerns to the local police department. Our field Office Agents who carry out the investigations work very closely with our Law Enforcement partners. If we do decide there is a risk, then we need to manage that risk. We want to find out, what can we do to create a situation thats less prone to violence . What can we do the 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 engage inning a harmful act . Each case is different, individual rise, so we need to make sure we are garnering our resources to address, which is why we work so closely with families a family around the individual. These are some of the management stranls we use. We dont have a magic wand. With work in the community with everybody else. Our field agents are working closely with their Mental Health centers that are close by them. Work closely with local Law Enforcement, they are working to address that persons needs. The number one thing thats important is to build rapport with individuals, build rapport with those around them. Those are the people we want are worried about and want to make sure theyre getting the support they need. As you see, there are a lot of considerations we put in the back kind of tying it all together in terms of findings of this report. Not every person was experiencing Mental Health symptoms and Mental Illness is not a barometer of dangerousness, but if they are mentally ill and have other things going on in their life we want to make sure theyre getting the care they need. They may not have a psychiatric illness but may be experiencing issues. May have anger issues, inability to handle conflict. We want to provide them resources as well. The number one thing is we like to encourage the community to share concerns about individuals whether its a loved one, classmate, someone theyre working with, because we want to make sure that person is getting the help. If the community is sharing their concern, then its really incumbent on the folks in authority to act on the concerns. Whether its Law Enforcement, school administrator. We want to make sure we are Encouraging Community members to share concerns, that we are being proactive helping those getting the help they need, using the 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, kathy . Well open it up for q a right now on the report. Whats really striking about both years is the similarities in the nature of the findings. What do you think what kind of intervention is not being done, do you think, to make inroads into what might be causing these attacks . So we have seen this before. There are challenges to information reporting of course. But i is have to say that even in these cases once we delved into the backgrounds there were instance where people reported their concern. We are encouraging communities to act on the kurn. In Law Enforcement is getting reports about an individual, make sure theyre considering it from a threat assessment perspective. If a School Manager is getting reports from coworkers or pelosi about their concern for that individual that they are acting on it. But communities need the resources and the training to be able to not only recognize the behavior, but what to do to follow up on that assessment piece. Thats what the secret service does. We are out there doing the trainings. We are encouraging informationsharing. We are encouraging people to understand, wh