Four Things To Know About Threat Assessment

Today, the second-largest district in the country, the Los Angeles Unified School District, cancelled school in response to an email threat of violence and bombs. The issue has highlighted the importance of threat assessment.

Contact: Emily Gersema at (213) 740-0252 or gersema@usc.edu

Erroll Southers, the associate director of the USC Homeland Security Center for Risk, Economic Analysis and Terrorism Events  and an adjunct professor at the USC Price School of Public Policy, said such decisions require careful threat assessment.

Contact: Erroll Southers at (213) 740-3861, or (323) 816-8045 or southers@usc.edu

Southers said the four following processes are critical for determining an appropriate response:

Specificity of the threat

Officials must determine whether the threat includes specific details about the time, place or location of the event. They also must determine if it has specifically targeted a certain place, someone or several people. “Those kinds of elements make the threat more or less credible,” Southers said.

Investigation

Determine who the source of the threat is and its origin. “With today’s social media, it’s easy for people to disseminate a threat,” Southers said.

“In today’s world, unfortunately, any kind of threat like this always has to be considered a possible terrorist-related threat until proven that it’s not,” Southers said. “It’s easier for us to assume that there’s a nexus to terrorism at the onset.”

It’s better to err on the side of caution. “We can always dial down. You don’t ever want to have to dial up,” he said.

Notification

The organization that received the threat needs to inform others, such as staff and faculty, as well as contact cooperating agencies to notify them of the threat. “Organizations will activate their emergency notification system,” Southers said.

Life safety

“This element is paramount to all the others. You want to determine and remove people who are in harm’s way,” Southers said.

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