BOISE -- As Tucson, Arizona continues to mourn the loss of six members of its community, many are wondering if there was anything that could've been done to prevent the shooting, and what's being done to prevent something like that here in Boise.
The National Behavioral Intervention Team Association is already working in the City of Trees to try to prevent exactly that.
After the shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007, psychologists (one from Boise State) formed the NaBITA. Its aim is for people to share information about the troubling behavior they see in an individual like Jared Loughner, the Tuscon shooting suspect, in an effort to make the entire community safer.
"There's not an epidemic, but there's things we're not doing that we could be," said Dr. Dan Timberlake, a counselor at Boise State University, and Vice President of Corporate and Workplace Initiatives at the NaBITA. "Before people act out their anger, their aggression, their violence... they don't snap, and just blow up. And say, 'Well, he never showed any signs.' They show signs."
The group's goal is to get organizations, like schools and businesses, sharing information about potentially violent behavior seen in their employees or students (like what Pima Community College saw in Jared Loughner that caused them to expel him in September).
"Boise State is actually one of the leaders, right now, in this area," said Timberlake. "We're bringing in all this best practice knowledge. So, we have a behavioral intervention team in place. It's got the right people on it."
But while Timberlake said there's no profile for a school shooter or a mass shooter, there are behaviors to look out for. He said that consistently these people are not hotheads. Rather, they're careful planners, have a high interest in weapons, and tend to be, as Timberlake puts it, injustice collectors.
"These are people who perceive that they have been treated unjustly, and it may go back to kindergarten, and they have not forgotten," said Timberlake. "And they carry that anger forward, and then there are more injustices that they collect, and put together to prove how badly they've been treated by the system. In extreme examples, they feel like their only choice is to destroy the system, and they're self-righteous when they do that."
But while Timberlake applauds Pima CC for doing what they were supposed to do (protecting their campus by expelling Loughner), the community and law enforcement couldn't take the same action, since Loughner wasn't making any specific threats.
"The chances of anybody getting hurt, in the community or on campus, are pretty low," said Timberlake. "Maybe it's the chance of getting struck by lightning. But, do you stand under a tree during an electircal storm? No."
If you want to know more about the National Behavioral Intervention Team Association, click here.
