GRANT INITIATIVE
The University of Hawaiʻi–West Oʻahu (UHWO) was awarded the 2021 and 2022 Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Grant from United States Department of Homeland Security. These grants were awarded with the purpose to establish or enhance capabilities to prevent targeted violence and terrorism in the state of Hawaiʻi. UHWO intends achieve this through collaboration with the Hawaiʻi State Fusion Center and Threat Team Hawaiʻi.
With the surge in targeted violence across the United States over the last few years, violence prevention has become an integral and important part of identifying and addressing known issues before they further escalate on the pathway to violence. Although Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management (BTAM) efforts have begun to grow, there is still more that needs to be done, especially here in Hawaiʻi. Rather than target one specific type of audience (for example, educational sectors), this project hopes to build statewide awareness of threat assessment and threat management capacity through education programming and awareness efforts.
2021
- Members of the local community engage among the broadest set of local stakeholders that sustain trusted partnerships and increase communications addressing radicalization to violence.
- Address violence prevention using public health approach to facilitate discussions and engagement with community stakeholders relating to behavior intervention/threat assessment management (BITAM) and bystander intervention which will inform necessary future steps in creating a bystander program.
2022
- Community members within the state of Hawaiʻi will have access to asynchronous training/presentations intending to provide information to broad set of local stakeholders to increase awareness, engagement, and knowledge base in threat assessment, concerning behaviors and radicalization to violence factors which may affect our local community as a whole.
- Taking a whole community approach to encourage community engagement by infusing trauma and culturally informed practices into threat assessment and violence prevention education to the state of Hawaiʻi.
- Members of the local community before they threaten the public, by knowing how to contact – and understanding the role of – threat assessment and management entities (for example, building and strengthening Threat Team Hawaiʻi’s infrastructure for greater community use).
MEET THE PROJECT TEAM
Beverly Baligad
Principal Investigator
Lindsey Roberts
Program Director
Sarah Armstrong
Compliance Specialist
Nadine Castillo
Mulitimedia Specialist
ECHO
The implementation of the ECHO platforms for BITAM Teams that incorporates an intentional approach, localized community-based programming and links to other state collaborative threat assessment efforts will ultimately result in safer schools and surrounding communities. Additional training, ongoing collaboration, networking with other teams, and programming to help encourage the community to safely intervene when necessary, will build a “spider’s web” of threat assessment and capacity that stretches across the state. This will allow campuses and communities to develop the capacity to identify, address, and prevent targeted violence.
THREAT TEAM HAWAIʻI
Threat Team Hawaiʻi (TTH) is a multi-disciplinary team dedicated to the prevention of targeted acts of violence. Through the cooperative sharing of information, resources, and the knowledge gained through training with leading experts in the field of threat assessment, the team endeavors to identify, assess, and manage situations where the risk of violence is imminent and/or anticipated. TTH includes representatives from law enforcement, education, mental health, and other support agencies responsible for community safety who regularly train on threat assessment and threat management, as well as privacy laws.
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UPCOMING EVENTS
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This project is funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, opportunity number DHS-22-TTP-132-00-01.