In the three years since a gunman killed 10 people in a racist attack at a Buffalo supermarket, New York officials have rolled out a program in counties across the state to prevent similar tragedies in the future.
At the heart of the effort are threat assessment teams made up of mental health officials, educators, social workers and local, state and federal law enforcement officers. The so-called Threat Assessment and Management (or TAM) teams’ mission is to assess whether or not people flagged to them as potential threats actually pose a risk of committing violence, such as school shootings or a racially motivated mass murders. When it's determined that they do, a team is tasked with deciding what can be done to intervene beforehand.
The teams are now operational in dozens of counties across the state, including Nassau and Suffolk on Long Island, Westchester and Rockland. The NYPD did not respond to a question about whether it has a TAM team, or uses a different threat assessment model.
“The thing about targeted violence is that it's preventable and the reason it's preventable is because almost all perpetrators go down a very specific pathway. They don’t snap,” said Ben Voce-Gardner, the director of the Office of Counter-Terrorism for New York state’s Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services.
The teams began prior to the 2022 Tops Supermarket shooting as a pilot program in three counties, according to Voce-Gardner. After the shooting, Gov. Kathy Hochul issued an executive order requiring each county across the state to create a domestic terrorism prevention plan. Many counties formed TAM teams to meet the requirement and they now exist in 48 of the state’s 62 counties.
Under the program, if someone notices worrisome behavior such as extremist views or violent ideation in a student, family member or someone else, they can report it to a TAM team member. Members of the team can then assess the potential threat and intervene before an attack — even before an arrest.
“Our goal is really to get them into a better, healthier place to a point where they're off that pathway and can be a constructive member of their community,” Voce-Gardner said.
By that measure, they have been successful. TAM teams have received about 2,600 referrals since 2022, Voce-Gardner said. About 1,000 of those resulted in the team developing management strategies, and fewer than 20% resulted in arrest, he said.
There’s no requirement that the teams be led by law enforcement, and one sergeant who spoke to Gothamist said partnering with civilians is a strength of the design.
“Everyone comes with their own background and their own experiences and because of that you bring all that to the table and they're thinking about something that I'm not thinking about as a law-enforcement officer,” said Sgt. Krystyna Feola, who serves on the team in upstate Madison County.
Bringing non-law enforcement officials to the table can be a good approach, said David Viola, an adjunct professor at the Center on Terrorism at John Jay College who is not involved in the New York state program. Local and federal law enforcement have collaborated for decades on terrorism cases, he said. Over time, those partnerships have expanded to include officials not involved in law enforcement, he said.
“What was missing from that original model … was bringing in non-law enforcement officials to not just investigate terrorism, but also to understand it and try to ward it off,” Viola said.
One mental health official who serves on Albany’s TAM team said his background allows him to better navigate the relationship between law enforcement and mental health services.
Dr. Stephen Giordano, who is the Albany County Mental Health Commissioner and a psychologist, said mental illness is oftentimes not the sole cause of targeted violence, such as a mass shooting or domestic terror attack. Instead, Giordano said, those sorts of attacks often stem from a grievance, like a complaint against a coworker or significant other or a racist political view. Working to understand those grievances can help solve the issue before violence – or before law enforcement is called, Giordano said.
“What we find is that ideology and extreme ideology is sometimes not the issue. It's a cover for the issue,” he said.
