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RAND researchers created this tool to advance efforts to prevent and reduce intentional, interpersonal firearm violence and public mass attacks in the United States. The goal of this tool is to provide practical strategies and guidance on deterring, mitigating, and responding to mass attacks for a variety of audiences, including public safety experts, practitioners, policymakers, community groups… (read more)

SchoolShooters.info is a compendium of documents relating to a wide range of active shooter incidents in educational settings. The purpose of this site is to help prevent school shootings and to provide insight into the perpetrators of large-scale school violence. The information and materials on this site are relevant for professionals in education, mental health, and law enforcement, as well as… (read more)

Ensuring the continuous operation of government and the safety of the personnel and citizens who enter government facilities on a daily basis is an essential part of securing our homeland. To enhance prevention efforts in this area, the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) studied 43 attacks targeting federal government facilities and officials that occurred between 2001… (read more)

Whether a campus is rural or urban, large or small, private or public, community/technical or four-year traditional, most schools have one or more teams with a purpose of supporting students of concern or preventing harmful behaviors. These groups are often called Threat Assessment Teams, Behavioral Intervention Teams, Case Management Teams, etc. The position of campus teams is a somewhat tricky… (read more)

The Police Foundation launched the Averted School Violence Near Miss Reporting System (ASV) for law enforcement officials, school officials, and mental health professionals with funding from the Community Oriented Policing Services Office. The mission of the ASV system is to share information about averted school violence incidents and lessons learned in order to improve school safety and help… (read more)

Given the increasing number and consistency of active shooter incidents, thousands of first responders, including police/law enforcement, campus public safety officials, and security officers, have undertaken active shooter or active threat trainings. These trainings evolve as best practices are updated to reflect new information that emerges from incidents. Anecdotal evidence suggests that… (read more)

An extensive examination of 37 incidents of targeted school violence that occurred in the United States from December, 1974 through May, 2000.

This is a second edition of a publication known as FEMA 428 that provides the design community and school administrators with the basic principles and techniques to design a school that is safe from potential physical attacks and, at the same time, offers an aesthetically pleasing design that is functional and meets the needs of the students, staff, administration, and general public. This… (read more)

This report provides a brief overview of trends in vehicle ramming incidents. It also includes results from the 2016 Intercollegiate Athletics Safety and Security Best Practices Compliance Survey. The results of the survey provide information on the implementation rates (%) of perimeter protections. Specifically, this paper investigates the rise in vehicular-ramming attacks in large public… (read more)

This report contains the results of a comprehensive assessment of the challenges and promise of this strategic approach to preventing violent extremism. It is based on a nationwide survey of law enforcement agencies and hundreds of hours of interviews and site visits with police departments and community members around the country. Challenges and promising practices are included.

This VALOR training module was created in response to the ambush-style assaults that have led to the injuries or deaths of many law enforcement officers in recent years. This training is designed to give officers tools to help prevent and react to ambush attacks.

This article offers threat assessment and management strategies to address the increased demands faced by campus law enforcement, mental health, and administration officials who assess and manage threats, perhaps several simultaneously.

This report provides an assessment of 272 incidents of violence that affected institutions of higher education (IHE) in the United States between 1909 and 2008. The report offers perspectives on key aspects of targeted violence at IHEs and provides a preliminary look at the scope of the issue. The researchers used open-source information to produce this report and as a result the observations and… (read more)

The FBI's objective for this initiative was to examine specific behaviors that may precede an attack and which might be useful in identifying, assessing, and managing those who may be on a pathway to deadly violence. By articulating the concrete, observable pre-attack behaviors of many active shooters, the FBI hopes to make these warning signs more visible and easily identifiable. This… (read more)

In 2014, the FBI initiated a study of active shooter incidents with the goal to provide federal, state, and local law enforcement with data so they can better understand how to prevent, prepare for, respond to, and recover from these incidents. As a result, the FBI identified 160 active shooter incidents that occurred in the U.S. between 2000 and 2013. The FBI has since published… (read more)