Our own John D. Cohen, Distinguished Professor of Professional Practice and Policy Advisor to the Police Institute, was recently interviewed about mass casualty attacks.  His interviews come amidst a new understanding of the role of mental health and a dynamic new strategy for law enforcement in dealing with such tragic events.

In the first article, John raises awareness about the relationship between domestic violence and mass shootings. Although domestic violence is not a direct indicator of an individual’s inclination toward more serious attacks, it appears to be part of a series of behavioral factors surrounding the mental health profile of mass casualty perpetrators. He explains that

“It’s not that I would say being involved in domestic violence is a precursor to a mass casualty attack, but it is a type of behavior that you would want to consider in evaluating someone, because it is a common characteristic we have found with mass casualty attackers across the motivational spectrum.”

https://www.attn.com/stories/18732/why-we-need-address-domestic-violence-stop-mass-shootings

In the second article, he and John Miller, the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism, call attention to a new anti-terror response model for law enforcement.  The model was used in the recent attack on the Bronx-Lebanon hospital on June 30th. The approach combines an overwhelming response that includes elite officers with long guns and a new approach in which the first arriving officer enters the scene. It also features a so-called “Rescue Task Force” that consists of paramedics and officers in order to treat grievously wounded victims in the midst of possible gun fire. Specifically, the protocol

calls for officers to go in and render an area — a hallway, lobby, staircase or floor — safe or “warm,” before forming “a force protection team” around a cadre of medical responders to “take them inside to start to do triage and start to remove patients,” said John J. Miller,  the Police Department’s Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism” and former Distinguished Lecturer of the Police Institute.

John Cohen further comments that New York is not the only city incorporating this new thinking. Within the Northern New Jersey UASI (Urban Areas Security Initiative) region, there has been an ongoing effort to raise law enforcement’s awareness of the need to provide training and guidance to first responding officers on bleeding control and evacuation from areas of immediate danger. We will feature an overview of NJ’s efforts in our next newsletter.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/nyregion/bronx-lebanon-hospital-siege-counterterrorism-nypd.html?mwrsm=Email