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RECOGNIZE THE WARNING SIGNS. PREVENT THE THREAT.

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  • Building a Reporting Culture: Five Practical Steps Before a Concern Becomes a Crisis

    Prevention & Preparedness

    Building a Reporting Culture: Five Practical Steps Before a Concern Becomes a Crisis

    “See something, say something” only works when people know what to report, where to report it, and what the organization will do with the information.

    An organization can tell employees, students, members, or visitors to “say something” when they notice a concern. But unless people know what to report, where to report it, and what happens next, the slogan may not produce useful information.

    The FBI’s 2025 active-shooter report included examples of potentially averted attacks that came to attention through observations and tips. DHS and U.S. Secret Service guidance likewise emphasize reporting systems, multidisciplinary assessment, and structured follow-up as important parts of targeted-violence prevention.

    Five Steps Organizations Can Take

    1. Give people one obvious way to report concerns

    A reporting system should be easy to find and simple to explain. Depending on the organization, that may be a dedicated phone number, email address, web form, anonymous reporting system, supervisor channel, school resource officer, security office, or other clearly identified point of contact. Avoid making people guess which department owns the problem.

    2. Teach people to report behavior—not labels

    A useful report describes what was observed: the words used, actions taken, changes noticed, dates, locations, circumstances, and other specific facts. Labels such as “crazy,” “dangerous,” or “suspicious” provide less useful information and can introduce bias.

    3. Make clear that uncertainty is acceptable

    People often remain silent because they are afraid of overreacting or getting someone in trouble. Reporting should be framed as sharing information for evaluation—not declaring that someone is guilty or dangerous. The person making a report does not have to complete the threat assessment.

    4. Put a multidisciplinary process behind the reporting channel

    A reporting mechanism is only the front door. Organizations need a process for reviewing concerns, gathering relevant facts, determining urgency, documenting decisions, and involving the appropriate professionals. DHS describes behavioral threat assessment and management as a systematic process of identifying, inquiring, assessing, and managing potential threats.

    5. Close the cultural gap

    People are more likely to report concerns when leadership demonstrates that reports are taken seriously, handled responsibly, and not automatically treated as disciplinary or criminal matters. In many cases, the appropriate response may involve support, conflict resolution, supervision, mental or behavioral health resources, policy enforcement, security measures, law enforcement, or a combination of interventions.

    What Should Be Reported?

    Organizations should tailor guidance to their environment, but examples can include direct or indirect threats, unusual fixation on violence, marked behavioral changes, escalating grievances, concerning communications, planning or preparation activity, attempts to obtain prohibited access, repeated boundary violations, or combinations of behaviors that create concern.

    Do Not Turn Examples Into a Checklist

    The presence of one concerning behavior does not establish intent to commit violence. Reporting allows trained or designated personnel to evaluate behavior in context. It should not become a shortcut for profiling people who are different, unpopular, distressed, or simply unusual.

    Know the Difference Between a Concern and an Emergency

    A prevention reporting system does not replace emergency procedures. If violence is occurring, a weapon is present, or there is an immediate threat to life, people should follow the organization’s emergency plan and contact emergency services as appropriate. Threat assessment is designed to create opportunities earlier in the process; emergency response addresses imminent danger.

    A Simple Test for Your Organization

    Ask five people in different roles the same question: “If you became concerned about someone’s behavior tomorrow, exactly how would you report it?”

    If you receive five different answers—or no answer at all—you have identified a prevention gap that can be fixed.

    How BTAP Supports the Human Side of Prevention

    Policies and reporting channels work only when people recognize that information may matter. BTAP is designed to strengthen awareness of observable behavior, meaningful changes, Inside and Outside Threats, and confrontational situations so participants are better prepared to notice when something deserves additional attention.

    Sources & Further Reading

    Kinesic Media provides these links for educational reference. External publications remain the work of their respective agencies and organizations.

  • Brown University: What the FBI Findings Teach About Planning, Grievance, and the Limits of Observation

    Incident Analysis

    Brown University: What the FBI Findings Teach About Planning, Grievance, and the Limits of Observation

    The federal investigation offers a useful prevention lesson precisely because it does not support an easy explanation—or the assumption that every planned attack produces obvious warning signs.

    Editor’s note: This article discusses a fatal mass-shooting investigation for the purpose of examining prevention-related findings. Kinesic Media avoids graphic detail and unnecessary focus on the attacker.

    On December 13, 2025, a gunman attacked Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, killing two students and wounding nine others. Two days later, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Dr. Nuno Loureiro was murdered in Brookline, Massachusetts. In April 2026, the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts released findings connecting the crimes and describing what investigators learned about the attacker’s planning and grievances.

    What the FBI Found

    After a multi-agency investigation that included more than 490 leads, more than 260 interviews, and extensive examination of physical and digital evidence, the FBI concluded that the attacker acted alone and that the crimes had no nexus to terrorism.

    Investigators determined that planning for the Brown University attack began years before the shooting. The FBI assessed that the attacker’s victims were symbolic: Brown University and Dr. Loureiro represented personal failures and perceived injustices that had accumulated over time.

    The FBI also described long-term grievances, interpersonal conflict, social isolation, suicidality, and a growing belief that the attacker had been treated unjustly. Federal investigators cautioned, however, that mental-health stressors alone could not explain the attacks.

    A Critical Finding

    The FBI specifically noted that the attacker’s transient lifestyle, long-term planning, and social isolation created little to no opportunity for bystanders to observe and contextualize the significance of his behaviors. That finding is important because it demonstrates both the value and the limits of behavioral threat awareness.

    What This Case Teaches

    1. Planning can develop over a long period

    The attack was not described as a sudden act arising from a single bad day. Investigators found incremental planning and preparation over several years. Long timelines can create opportunities for prevention—but only when behavior, communications, preparation, or other relevant information becomes observable to someone who recognizes its significance.

    2. Grievance can become part of a developing pathway

    Grievance is common and, by itself, is not a predictor of violence. Most people who feel wronged never commit violent acts. In this investigation, however, the FBI assessed that accumulated grievances were part of a larger pattern that included perceived injustice, personal failure, planning, isolation, and commitment to violence.

    3. Observation requires access to behavior

    This case is a reminder that prevention frameworks have limits. If an individual is isolated and significant planning occurs where family members, coworkers, peers, educators, or others cannot observe it, there may be little information available to report. Behavioral awareness is not omniscience.

    4. Avoid simple explanations

    It would be misleading to reduce this attack to one cause—mental health, grievance, academic failure, firearm access, or any other single factor. The FBI’s findings describe an interaction of multiple circumstances over time. Responsible threat assessment works the same way: it considers the totality of available information rather than relying on one label.

    What This Case Does Not Prove

    The Brown University attack does not prove that every isolated person, every individual with a grievance, or every person experiencing mental-health difficulty is dangerous. Nor does it prove that the attack could necessarily have been prevented if someone had simply “paid attention.” The FBI explicitly described the lack of bystander opportunities to observe and contextualize the attacker’s planning.

    That distinction matters. Prevention improves when organizations learn from documented behavior without turning lessons into profiles or hindsight assumptions.

    The BTAP Connection

    For BTAP, the lesson is not that participants should try to identify the next attacker. The lesson is that observable behavior should be taken seriously when it changes, escalates, combines with other concerning information, or appears within a meaningful context—and that organizations need a process for getting that information to the right people.

    Sometimes warning information exists and intervention is possible. Sometimes the information is fragmented. Sometimes, as the FBI found in this case, opportunities for observation may be extremely limited. A credible prevention approach has to acknowledge all three possibilities.

    Sources & Further Reading

    Kinesic Media provides these links for educational reference. External publications remain the work of their respective agencies and organizations.

  • FBI’s 2025 Active Shooter Report: What Organizations Should Notice

    Research & Reports

    The FBI’s 2025 Active Shooter Report: What Organizations Should Notice

    The latest FBI report contains more than incident totals. Its findings on planning, preparation, reporting, and potentially averted attacks deserve careful attention.

    On July 30, 2026, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released its 2025 Active Shooter Incidents in the United States report. The annual publication is intended to help law enforcement, emergency responders, private organizations, and the public better understand active-shooter incidents and improve prevention, mitigation, and response.

    The report should not be read as a count of every shooting or every act of gun violence in the United States. The FBI uses a specific definition of an active shooter: one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area.

    What the FBI Reported

    For 2025, the FBI designated 34 incidents as active-shooter incidents. That was a 42% increase from the 24 incidents designated in 2024, although the 2025 total remained below the five-year average of 43 incidents per year. Incidents occurred in 21 states and Washington, D.C., across commerce, open-space, government, education, and house-of-worship settings.

    The Number That Deserves Attention

    The FBI reported that nearly 68% of the 2025 incidents involved planning and preparation by the shooter, up from 58% in 2024. Planning does not automatically mean that warning behavior will be visible to others, but it reinforces why prevention work must look beyond the moment an attack begins.

    A New Focus on Attacks That Did Not Happen

    One of the most important additions to the 2025 report is a section describing potentially averted active-shooter incidents. The FBI says these cases involved law-enforcement observations, tips to the FBI or local agencies, or information provided to school resource officers and campus police.

    That matters because prevention is difficult to measure. Successful intervention often produces no dramatic event, no casualty count, and no headline. A concern is reported, information is evaluated, intervention occurs, and the feared attack never takes place.

    What Organizations Should Take From It

    1. Reporting systems matter

    People need to know where to take a concern and what information is useful. A reporting process that is confusing, inaccessible, or perceived as pointless can cause valuable observations to remain isolated.

    2. Context matters more than a checklist

    No single behavior should be treated as proof that someone will become violent. Behavioral information becomes more meaningful when it is considered with changes over time, circumstances, communications, stressors, grievances, planning activity, and other relevant facts.

    3. Prevention and response are different capabilities

    Emergency planning, access control, alarms, and active-shooter response remain important. They address what organizations do when danger is immediate. Behavioral awareness and threat assessment address an earlier question: what can be recognized, reported, assessed, or managed before an emergency reaches that point?

    The Kinesic Media Perspective

    The FBI’s 2025 findings reinforce a central idea behind BTAP: the objective is not to predict the future from one behavior. It is to become more capable of noticing meaningful information, changes, and circumstances that may deserve additional attention—and to make sure those observations reach the people who can evaluate them responsibly.

    The most valuable lesson in a report like this is not simply the number of attacks that occurred. It is that prevention can begin with ordinary people recognizing that something has changed, taking the concern seriously, and getting the information to the right place.

    Sources & Further Reading

    Kinesic Media provides these links for educational reference. External publications remain the work of their respective agencies and organizations.