Presidential Protection Unit 2: Protective Intelligence and Threat Assessment: The Public Science

School: Minister Destiny Testimony Schools Track: Law Enforcement — Professional Training Wing: Presidential Protection (Secret Service) Unit: 2 of 4 (self-paced) Tier: Public — open to all students Founded and presented by: Muslim Ordained Minister Destiny Marie Morgan

A note on what this school is: this is community-designed training — Minister Destiny's program. It is not agency policy and does not replace Secret Service training or the law. Where this program proposes new approaches, they are taught and labeled as proposals. Nothing here is legal advice. This track contains NO protective-operations content of any kind — it teaches the Service's published history, law, and prevention research. Rank in this school is a school achievement only — not a job rank, title, or credential. This unit is compiled from public sources; it is not classified material, and this school holds no security-clearance content.

Before you start

• This school never collects your name. Progress and quiz answers stay on your device; pass the unit quiz (80% or higher, retakes allowed, answers are not shown) and your certificate downloads with a blank name line to fill in after saving.
• Unit 1 gave you an agency with two missions. This unit studies the science that agency built to stop attacks before they happen — and then gave away, on purpose, to schools, workplaces, and police departments everywhere. Everything here is NTAC's published, prevention-focused research, taught at the level NTAC itself publishes it. If you take one sentence with you, let it be NTAC's own: targeted violence is preventable when concerning behavior is noticed, reported, and assessed in time.

The lesson

1. Where the science came from: studying attacks to prevent them

The National Threat Assessment Center was established in 1998 as a component of the Secret Service, and Congress formally authorized its work in the Presidential Threat Protection Act of 2000: to research threat assessment and targeted violence, train others, facilitate information-sharing among public-safety agencies, consult on cases and programs, and help standardize good practice. Its staff, as NTAC describes itself, is a multidisciplinary team of social science researchers and regional program managers supporting partners in law enforcement, schools, government, and the private sector. That staffing is itself a finding: NTAC's questions — why does a person move toward violence, what did the people around him see, where could someone have intervened — are research questions, answered with case files, interviews, and data, not instinct.

NTAC grew out of the Service's protective-intelligence experience studying people who attacked, or came close to attacking, public officials. After the 1999 attack at Columbine High School, NTAC partnered with the U.S. Department of Education on the Safe School Initiative — a study of 37 incidents of targeted school violence, published in 2002 with a practical guide, Threat Assessment in Schools. That partnership set this unit's pattern: study real cases, publish the findings openly, and turn them into steps institutions can actually carry out.

Notice what this science is not: it is not a secret method, and this unit contains none. NTAC publishes its reports free, because a prevention finding only prevents something when the people positioned to act on it have read it.

2. The central findings: no profile, a pathway, and warning behaviors

Three findings run through NTAC's published work so consistently that a student should be able to state each one plainly.

There is no profile. NTAC repeats this across two decades of reports: there is no profile of a student attacker, and no demographic or character checklist that identifies who will commit targeted violence. Attackers in the studied cases varied in age, background, grades, social standing, and family circumstance; some had been disciplined and some had never been in trouble. Any approach that sorts people by appearance, origin, or group will miss the person quietly moving toward violence and falsely accuse people who pose no risk. That is why NTAC's model is called behavioral threat assessment: it assesses what a person is doing and communicating, never who a person is.

Attacks are rarely impulsive. In study after study, NTAC found targeted attacks were usually the end of a process, not a sudden snap. The published research concept for that process is the pathway to violence: a person experiences a grievance — a real or perceived wrong, loss, humiliation, or failure that does not resolve; the grievance hardens into ideation, the idea that violence is an acceptable answer; the person researches, plans, and prepares; and finally the person breaches and attacks. Learn the pathway the way NTAC teaches it to schools: not as a prediction machine, but as a map of exits. At every stage before the attack, the person's behavior was, in many studied cases, visible to someone — and at every stage, an assessment, a conversation, a service, or a lawful intervention could have changed the outcome. Prevention lives in the length of that pathway.

Bystanders usually knew something. In the Safe School Initiative and NTAC's later studies, most attackers had communicated their grievances, ideas, or intentions to someone beforehand — a friend, a classmate, a sibling, a journal, a post — and often more than one person held a piece of the picture. NTAC calls attention to leakage and to concerning behaviors: talk or writing about violence as a solution, fascination with earlier attackers, sudden changes in behavior, expressions of hopelessness, and efforts to acquire means. None of these, alone, proves a person will attack — each also appears in people who need help and will never harm anyone. That is why the model pairs reporting with assessment by a trained team, not automatic punishment: the report opens an inquiry whose first products may be support and services, not discipline.

3. The model: identify, assess, manage

NTAC's published behavioral threat assessment model is commonly summarized in three steps, and this school teaches it in those terms.

Identify. A community first needs ways for concerning behavior to come to light: people who know what to take seriously, and reporting routes they trust enough to use. Identification is a culture before it is a form. NTAC's school research found reporting works where students believe adults will act fairly, protect the reporter, and help the student reported on — and fails where students expect ridicule, indifference, or a purely punitive response.

Assess. When a concern is reported, a trained, multidisciplinary team gathers information from multiple sources and asks disciplined questions: What has this person said and done? Is there evidence of grievance, ideation, planning, or preparation along the pathway? What stressors are pressing right now? What protective factors — relationships, goals, services, faith, family — are present or could be strengthened? The question is never "does this person match a type?" It is "do this person's behaviors and circumstances show movement toward violence, and what would move them away from it?" Assessment also screens for the person's own safety: NTAC's school research documents how often attackers were themselves suicidal, bullied, or in untreated distress, so an assessment that ignores the person's welfare is incomplete on its own terms.

Manage. Assessment ends in a plan proportioned to what was found. For many people assessed, management means counseling, mentoring, academic or workplace support, family engagement, and follow-up over time — help, deliberately given. Where risk is higher, it can include safety planning, coordination with law enforcement, and, where the law provides and facts require it, criminal process. Cases are documented and not closed by a single interview — the team monitors, because grievances, stressors, and supports all change. And the model carries a boundary a student must respect: threat assessment is a prevention tool, not a disciplinary shortcut, not a way to remove unpopular people, and never a judgment based on race, religion, politics, disability, or any other trait. NTAC's guides require fair, consistent application, with attention to civil rights, so it remains a practice a community can trust.

The Service's 2024 guide, Behavioral Threat Assessment Units, carries this same model into police agencies, as dedicated trained units that consult for schools and workplaces around them.

4. Bystander reporting: the hinge the whole model swings on

If the pathway is the map, bystanders are the witnesses standing along it — and NTAC's research is blunt that in case after case, someone saw something and the information did not reach people who could assess it in time. The reasons are human: the listener thought the talk was joking; feared being wrong or retaliation; feared getting a friend in trouble; did not know whom to tell; or told one adult who did not pass it on. NTAC and its partners built a published toolkit on this problem — Improving School Safety Through Bystander Reporting, produced with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — because closing those gaps is design work, not scolding.

The toolkit's public lessons translate well beyond schools. Offer more than one way to report, including an anonymous option where law and policy allow, because fear of being named is a leading reason reports never happen. Teach specifically what to report — behaviors and communications, in the person's own words where possible — rather than asking students to decide whether a threat is "real." Close the loop: a community that never hears what happened after a report stops reporting, so programs should acknowledge reports and show they lead to assessment and help. Protect reporters from retaliation as policy. And train adults who receive reports to take every one seriously, document it, and route it to the team the same day — the research record includes cases lost in exactly that handoff.

One more distinction belongs to every student: reporting is not accusing. A report says, "I heard and saw this, and I am handing it to people trained to find out what it means." In NTAC's model the likeliest outcome of a good assessment is that a struggling person gets help earlier — and a community that understands that reports sooner, which is where prevention lives.

5. Building a team: what NTAC's guides ask of schools and workplaces

NTAC's operational guides — Enhancing School Safety Using a Threat Assessment Model (2018), Protecting America's Schools (2019), Averting Targeted School Violence (2021), and its mass-attacks series — lay out the steps for standing up a threat assessment capability. At a general level: establish a multidisciplinary team (in a school, administrators, counselors, teachers, and a law-enforcement partner; in a workplace, human resources, security, legal counsel, and mental-health professionals); define in writing the behaviors and thresholds that bring a case to the team; adopt a consistent identify-assess-manage process with standard questions, documentation, and follow-through; connect the team to needed services before the first case arrives; train the whole community in what to report and how; and review the program for fairness, because a team that becomes a discipline pipeline loses the community trust its reports depend on.

The Averting Targeted School Violence study is hope with documentation: 67 plots against K-12 schools, from 2006 to 2018, stopped before anyone was harmed — in case after case because someone reported what they had seen, and a team or agency intervened. The Mass Attacks in Public Spaces series finds the same themes from the other side, and together the NTAC library makes one argument two ways: the behaviors that precede attacks are knowable, bystanders can be helped to report them, and organized assessment turns reports into prevention.

6. The student's limits, stated plainly

A short unit does not make anyone a threat assessment professional: assessments are conducted by trained, multidisciplinary teams with access to records, services, and lawful authority — not by a lone person with a checklist. What this unit makes you is almost as valuable: a reliable bystander, a fair colleague, and, if you serve on a team one day, a member who knows the published model and can notice when a process drifts from behavior toward profiling. Know the findings — no profile, a pathway with exits, bystanders who usually knew. Know the model — identify, assess, manage, with help as its first product. Know your routes — your institution's reporting system and 911 when danger is immediate. And know the boundary this track never crosses: this unit teaches only prevention science the Service publishes for everyone.

Words to know — Presidential Protection Unit 2

• National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) — the Secret Service research center, established in 1998 and authorized by Congress in 2000, that studies targeted violence and publishes prevention research and guidance for law enforcement, schools, and communities.
• Targeted violence — premeditated violence directed at a specific person, group, place, or institution, as distinct from impulsive violence; the class of attacks NTAC works to prevent.
• Behavioral threat assessment — a fact-based process that identifies, assesses, and manages people whose behaviors suggest movement toward violence; it evaluates conduct and circumstances, never identity or traits.
• Pathway to violence — the published research concept describing how a person can move from grievance, to the idea of violence, to planning and preparing, to an attack — with opportunities to intervene at each stage.
• Grievance — a real or perceived wrong, loss, humiliation, or failure a person dwells on and blames on others; in NTAC's research, the common starting point of the pathway.
• Leakage — a person's communication to a third party of intent, ideas, or plans to do harm; a concerning behavior NTAC teaches communities to report.
• Concerning behavior — observable conduct or communication that may signal distress or movement toward violence, and that merits assessment, not automatic punishment.
• Bystander reporting — passing observed concerning behavior to people designated to assess it; NTAC research finds bystanders often held information before attacks, and publishes guidance on making reporting safe and trusted.
• Multidisciplinary team — the group NTAC's guides recommend for assessments, drawn from several professions — administration, counseling, teaching, human resources, law enforcement — so no single viewpoint decides a case.
• Management (in threat assessment) — the plan that follows assessment: supports, services, monitoring, safety planning, and, where facts and law require, law-enforcement action — proportioned to what the assessment found.

Myths vs facts — Presidential Protection Unit 2

• Myth: Experts can profile who will become an attacker by age, background, or personality type. Fact: NTAC states plainly, across its published research, that there is no profile of a student attacker or of targeted-violence attackers generally; prevention works by assessing behavior and circumstances, not traits.
• Myth: Attacks come out of nowhere, so nothing can prevent them. Fact: NTAC's case studies repeatedly find a pathway — grievance, ideation, planning, preparation — with concerning behaviors visible to others beforehand; its core public message is that targeted violence is preventable.
• Myth: Reporting a concern means accusing someone of being a future attacker. Fact: In NTAC's model a report triggers a careful, multidisciplinary assessment whose most common products are support, services, and monitoring; a report hands a concern to trained people — it is not a verdict.
• Myth: Threat assessment is a secret protective method the Service keeps to itself. Fact: NTAC was created and congressionally authorized to publish this science — its school guides, mass-attacks reports, bystander-reporting toolkit, and 2024 guide for law-enforcement threat assessment units are free public documents, and NTAC trains outside partners by the tens of thousands.

Think it through — Presidential Protection Unit 2

The situation: You coach a community youth league. After practice, a 15-year-old player tells you that a teammate "keeps saying he's going to get everyone back at school for laughing at him," has shown friends angry writings about doing it, and lately "doesn't sound like he's joking anymore." The player begs you not to tell anyone: "He's my friend. You'll get him expelled and he'll know it was me."

Walk it through:

1. Name what you actually have, in behavioral terms: repeated statements about harming people at school, writings expressing the same idea, and a change a close friend noticed from joking to serious. On NTAC's pathway, that language belongs at grievance and ideation — and you are not the assessor. Your job is the bystander's job, done promptly.
2. Protect the reporter first. Thank him, tell him he did the right thing, and be honest: you cannot keep safety information secret, but you will pass his name only to those whose role requires it, and you will tell the school he asked for protection from retaliation.
3. Report the same day, through the route that exists: the school's threat assessment team or administration, your league's safeguarding contact, and — if anything suggested a specific, near-term plan — law enforcement immediately, by 911 if danger could be imminent. Report the teammate's own words and behaviors exactly as you heard them, separate from your opinions.
4. Resist the two easy errors. Do not confront the teammate yourself, search his belongings, or interview his friends to "check first" — amateur investigation contaminates the real one. And do not decide the report is unnecessary because he is "a good kid" or his friend might be exaggerating: every student is assessed by the same behavioral questions, and exaggeration is something assessors are trained to sort out.
5. Expect the right outcome, and say so to the player who trusted you: most assessments end in help — counseling, support, a plan, watchful follow-up — not expulsion or arrest. If he is moving along the pathway, your report may be the exit someone finally offered him. Either way, the friend who spoke up protected him.

Try this — Presidential Protection Unit 2

Build your own community's prevention map, on one page, using only public information:

• Your routes. For the school, workplace, or congregation you know best, write down: whom a concern goes to, its published reporting number, your local police non-emergency number, and 911 for immediate danger. If you cannot find a published route, that gap is your finding — note it.
• The pathway in plain words. Without looking back, write the pathway's stages in your own sentences, then check them against Section 2. Beside each stage, add one sentence beginning "an exit here could be…" — a conversation, a service, a report, a team's plan.
• The fairness check. Write the three questions you would want asked about anyone you love who was reported: What did he actually say and do? What is pressing on him right now? What help would move him away from harm? If a program you know could not answer those three, it is not running NTAC's model yet.

Keep the page where a frightening moment will find it.

Resources to keep — Presidential Protection Unit 2

• 911 — for immediate danger, serious injury, or a medical emergency that cannot wait.
• 988 — call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, for a person in emotional distress or for guidance on helping someone else.
• Crisis Text Line — text HOME to 741741 to connect with a live, trained crisis counselor by text.
• SAMHSA National Helpline — 1-800-662-4357 — free, confidential treatment referral and information for substance use and mental-health concerns.
• Poison Control — 1-800-222-1222 — for suspected poisoning or a harmful substance exposure; when in doubt about urgency, call 911 first.
• National Domestic Violence Hotline — 1-800-799-7233 — confidential help for domestic violence, by phone or online chat.
• RAINN — 1-800-656-4673 — the National Sexual Assault Hotline, confidential support and referrals.
• Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline — 1-800-422-4453 — crisis counseling and reporting guidance about a child.
• National Threat Assessment Center — https://www.secretservice.gov/ntac — NTAC's public home and research library, including the school-safety guides and the mass-attacks series.

Public sources — Presidential Protection Unit 2

• U.S. Secret Service, National Threat Assessment Center — research, guides, and training publications — https://www.secretservice.gov/ntac
• U.S. Secret Service, National Threat Assessment Center overview — https://www.secretservice.gov/protection/ntac
• NTAC public reports and guides taught at a general level in this unit, all published free by the Secret Service at the NTAC address above: The Final Report and Findings of the Safe School Initiative (2002, with the U.S. Department of Education); Enhancing School Safety Using a Threat Assessment Model (2018); Protecting America's Schools (2019); Averting Targeted School Violence (2021); the Mass Attacks in Public Spaces series; Improving School Safety Through Bystander Reporting (NTAC/CISA toolkit); Behavioral Threat Assessment Units (2024).

What you earned / what's next — Presidential Protection Unit 2

✅ Presidential Protection Unit 2 complete (quiz score 80% or higher): You can state NTAC's core findings — no profile, a pathway with exits, bystanders who usually knew — run the identify-assess-manage model, and explain how fair, multidisciplinary teams turn reports into help and prevention.

Your certificate

Minister Destiny Testimony Schools Minister Destiny Testimony Schools — Law Enforcement Certificate of Completion — Presidential Protection Unit 2: Protective Intelligence and Threat Assessment: The Public Science

This certificate is presented by Muslim Ordained Minister Destiny Marie Morgan

Awarded to: ______________________________ (write your name here after you download — your name is never collected or stored by this school)

Date completed: ______________

Congratulations. You have learned the most generous science in American law enforcement — research a protective agency chose to publish so that teachers, parents, and neighbors could save lives it will never know about. Be the bystander who speaks, and the adult who listens. — Minister Destiny Marie Morgan

This is a certificate of educational completion from Minister Destiny Testimony Schools, a community-designed training program. It is not a state license, a POST certification, or an agency qualification, and this program is not agency policy.

What's next: Presidential Protection Unit 3 — Financial Crimes Foundations: Counterfeit, Fraud, and Electronic Crimes

Minister Destiny Testimony Schools — Law Enforcement: Professional Training Wing. Community-designed educational training compiled from public sources; not agency policy, not a certification, and not legal advice.