See Something, Say Something: The Snitch States of America

Joel Walbert

Sep 24, 2023

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Source: Rutherford Institute

A Nation of Snitches: DHS Is Grooming Americans to Report on Each Other

By John & Nisha Whitehead

September 19, 2023

“There were relatively few secret police, and most were just processing the information coming in. I had found a shocking fact. It wasn’t the secret police who were doing this wide-scale surveillance and hiding on every street corner. It was the ordinary German people who were informing on their neighbors.”—Professor Robert Gellately, author of Backing Hitler

Are you among the 41% of Americans who regularly attend church or some other religious service?

Do you believe the economy is about to collapse and the government will soon declare martial law?

Do you display an unusual number of political and/or ideological bumper stickers on your car?

Are you among the 44% of Americans who live in a household with a gun? If so, are you concerned that the government may be plotting to confiscate your firearms?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you may be an anti-government extremist (a.k.a. domestic terrorist) in the eyes of the government and flagged for heightened surveillance and preemptive intervention.

Let that sink in a moment.

If you believe in and exercise your rights under the Constitution (namely, your right to speak freely, worship freely, associate with like-minded individuals who share your political views, criticize the government, own a weapon, demand a warrant before being questioned or searched, or any other activity viewed as potentially anti-government, racist, bigoted, anarchic or sovereign), you have just been promoted to the top of the government’s terrorism watch list.

I assure you I’m not making this stuff up.

So what is the government doing about these so-called American “extremists”?

The government is grooming the American people to spy on each other as part of its Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, or CP3 program.

According to journalist Leo Hohmann, the government is handing out $20 million in grants to police, mental health networks, universities, churches and school districts to enlist their help in identifying Americans who might be political dissidents or potential “extremists.”

As Hohmann explains, “Whether it’s COVID and vaccines, the war in Ukraine, immigration, the Second Amendment, LGBTQ ideology and child-gender confusion, the integrity of our elections, or the issue of protecting life in the womb, you are no longer allowed to hold dissenting opinions and voice them publicly in America. If you do, your own government will take note and consider you a potential ‘violent extremist’ and terrorist.”

Cue the dawning of the Snitch State.

This new era of snitch surveillance is the lovechild of the government’s post-9/11 “See Something, Say Something” programs combined with the self-righteousness of a politically correct, hyper-vigilant, technologically-wired age.

For more than two decades, the Department of Homeland Security has plastered its “See Something, Say Something” campaign on the walls of metro stations, on billboards, on coffee cup sleeves, at the Super Bowl, even on television monitors in the Statue of Liberty. Colleges, universities and even football teams and sporting arenas have lined up for grants to participate in the program.

The government has even designated September 25 as National “If You See Something, Say Something” Awareness Day.

If you see something suspicious, says the DHS, say something about it to the police, call it in to a government hotline, or report it using a convenient app on your smart phone.

This DHS slogan is nothing more than the government’s way of indoctrinating “we the people” into the mindset that we’re an extension of the government and, as such, have a patriotic duty to be suspicious of, spy on, and turn in our fellow citizens.

This is what is commonly referred to as community policing.

Yet while community policing and federal programs such as “See Something, Say Something” are sold to the public as patriotic attempts to be on guard against those who would harm us, they are little more than totalitarian tactics dressed up and repackaged for a more modern audience as well-intentioned appeals to law and order and security.

The police state could not ask for a better citizenry than one that carries out its own policing.

After all, the police can’t be everywhere. So how do you police a nation when your population outnumbers your army of soldiers? How do you carry out surveillance on a nation when there aren’t enough cameras, let alone viewers, to monitor every square inch of the country 24/7? How do you not only track but analyze the transactions, interactions and movements of every person within the United States?

The answer is simpler than it seems: You persuade the citizenry to be your eyes and ears. You hype them up on color-coded “Terror alerts,” keep them in the dark about the distinctions between actual threats and staged “training” drills so that all crises seem real, desensitize them to the sight of militarized police walking their streets, acclimatize them to being surveilled “for their own good,” and then indoctrinate them into thinking that they are the only ones who can save the nation from another 9/11.

Consequently, we now live in a society in which a person can be accused of any number of crimes without knowing what exactly he has done. He might be apprehended in the middle of the night by a roving band of SWAT police. He might find himself on a no-fly list, unable to travel for reasons undisclosed. He might have his phones or internet tapped based upon a secret order handed down by a secret court, with no recourse to discover why he was targeted.

This Kafkaesque nightmare has become America’s reality.

This is how you turn a people into extensions of the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent police state, and in the process turn a citizenry against each other.

It’s a brilliant ploy, with the added bonus that while the citizenry remains focused on and distrustful of each other and shadowy forces from outside the country, they’re incapable of focusing on more definable threats that fall closer to home—namely, the government and its cabal of Constitution-destroying agencies and corporate partners.

Community policing did not come about as a feel-good, empowering response to individuals trying to “take back” their communities from crime syndicates and drug lords.

Rather, “Community-Oriented Policing” or COPS (short for Community Partnerships, Organizational Transformation, and Problem Solving) is a Department of Justice program designed to foster partnerships between police agencies and members of the community.

To this end, the Justice Department identifies five distinct “partners” in the community policing scheme: law enforcement and other government agencies, community members and groups, nonprofits, churches and service providers, private businesses and the media.

Together, these groups are supposed to “identify” community concerns, “engage” the community in achieving specific goals, serve as “powerful” partners with the government, and add their “considerable resources” to the government’s already massive arsenal of technology and intelligence. The mainstream media’s role, long recognized as being a mouthpiece for the government, is formally recognized as “publicizing” services from government or community agencies or new laws or codes that will be enforced, as well as shaping public perceptions of the police, crime problems, and fear of crime.

Inevitably, this begs the question: if there’s nothing wrong with community engagement, if the police can’t be everywhere at once, if surveillance cameras do little to actually prevent crime, and if we need to “take back our communities” from the crime syndicates and drug lords, then what’s wrong with community policing and “See Something, Say Something”?

What’s wrong is that these programs are not, in fact, making America any safer while turning us into a legalistic, intolerant, squealing, bystander nation.

We are now the unwitting victims of an interconnected, tightly woven, technologically evolving web of real-time, warrantless, wall-to-wall, widening mass surveillance dragnet comprised of fusion centers, red flag laws, behavioral threat assessments, terror watch lists, facial recognition, snitch tip lines, biometric scanners, pre-crime programs, DNA databases, data mining, precognitive technology and contact tracing apps, to name just a few.

This is how the government keeps us under control and in its crosshairs.

By the time you combine the DHS’ “See Something, Say Something” with CP3 and community policing, which has gone global in the guise of the Strong Cities Network program, you’ve got a formula for enabling the government to not only flag distinct “anti-government” segments of the population but locking down the entire nation.

Under the guise of fighting violent extremism “in all of its forms and manifestations” in cities and communities across the world, the Strong Cities Network program works with the UN and the federal government to train local police agencies across America in how to identify, fight and prevent extremism, as well as address intolerance within their communities, using all of the resources at their disposal.

What this program is really all about, however, is community policing on a global scale with the objective being to prevent violent extremism by targeting its source: racism, bigotry, hatred, intolerance, etc. In other words, police will identify, monitor and deter individuals who could be construed as potential extremist “threats,” violent or otherwise, before they can become actual threats.

The government’s war on extremists has been sold to Americans in much the same way that the USA Patriot Act was sold to Americans: as a means of combatting terrorists who seek to destroy America.

However, as we now know, the USA Patriot Act was used as a front to advance the surveillance state, allowing the government to establish a far-reaching domestic spying program that has turned every American citizen into a criminal suspect.

Similarly, the concern with the government’s ongoing anti-extremism program is that it will, in many cases, be utilized to render otherwise lawful, nonviolent activities as potentially extremist.

Keep in mind that the government agencies involved in ferreting out American “extremists” will carry out their objectives—to identify and deter potential extremists—in concert with fusion centers, data collection agencies, behavioral scientists, corporations, social media, and community organizers and by relying on cutting-edge technology for surveillance, facial recognition, predictive policing, biometrics, and behavioral epigenetics (in which life experiences alter one’s genetic makeup).

This is pre-crime on an ideological scale and it’s been a long time coming.

For example, in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released two reports, one on “Rightwing Extremism,” which broadly defines rightwing extremists as individuals and groups “that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely,” and one on “Leftwing Extremism,” which labeled environmental and animal rights activist groups as extremists.

These reports, which use the words terrorist and extremist interchangeably, indicate that for the government, anyone seen as opposing the government—whether they’re Left, Right or somewhere in between—can be labeled an extremist.

Fast forward a few years, and you have the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which each successive presidential administration has continually re-upped, that allows the military to take you out of your home, lock you up with no access to friends, family or the courts if you’re seen as an extremist.

Now connect the dots, from the 2009 Extremism reports to the NDAA and the far-reaching data crime fusion centers that collect and share surveillance data between local, state and federal police agencies.

Add in tens of thousands of armed, surveillance drones that will soon blanket American skies, facial recognition technology that identifies and tracks you wherever you go and whatever you do. And then to complete the circle, toss in the real-time crime centers which are attempting to “predict” crimes and identify criminals before they happen based on widespread surveillance, complex mathematical algorithms and prognostication programs.

If you can’t read the writing on the wall, you need to pay better attention.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, unless we can put the brakes on this dramatic expansion and globalization of the government’s powers, we’re not going to recognize this country five, ten—even twenty—years from now.

As long as “we the people” continue to allow the government to trample our rights in the so-called name of national security, things will get worse, not better.

It’s already worse.

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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Source: LeoHohmann.com

EXCLUSIVE: Homeland Security awards $20 million in grants to police, mental health networks, universities, churches and school districts to help identify Americans as potential ‘extremists’

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced on September 6 that $20 million in federal grants (your tax dollars) will be handed out to 34 organizations to “prevent targeted violence and terrorism.”

Since today is the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, you might think these 34 organizations will be focused on al-Qaeda, ISIS or the Iranian Republican Guard Corps. But you would be wrong. They are focused on Americans who dissent from the prevailing narratives coming out of the federal government and its collaborating partners in the corporate media and major social media platforms.

Whether it’s Covid and vaccines, the war in Ukraine, immigration, the Second Amendment, LGBTQ ideology and child-gender confusion, the integrity of our elections, or the issue of protecting life in the womb, you are no longer allowed to hold dissenting opinions and voice them publicly in America. If you do, your own government will take note and consider you a potential “violent extremist” and terrorist.

The $20 million is going to universities, behavioral and mental-health providers, youth services organizations, schools, churches and faith leaders, and state law enforcement agencies. Their job will be to identify political dissidents and foster interventions among those Americans considered to be “going down a path toward violence.”

This money comes from the Department of Homeland Security Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships, or CP3. The program was started in fiscal 2020 and has to date awarded $70 million in grants to private nonprofits, state and local government agencies.

The following is from the Department of Homeland Security press release announcing the $20 million in new grants (notice the emphasis on public health, which is the same emphasis used by the U.N. World Health Organization, an emphasis also used by New Mexico Governor Michelle Grisham in her recent declaration suspending the Second Amendment).

“Created in 2021, CP3 is tasked with strengthening our country’s ability to prevent acts of targeted violence and terrorism nationwide. To help accomplish this mission, CP3 cultivates partnerships across every level of government and within local communities, provides grant funding and prevention training, and promotes greater awareness and understanding of TVTP (Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention) strategies and best practices.  Leveraging a public health-informed approach, CP3 brings together behavioral and mental health providers, educators, faith leaders, social service providers, nonprofits, law enforcement, and other state, local, and community partners to address systemic factors that can lead to violence while strengthening protective factors at the local level that support the safety, well-being, and resiliency of communities in the United States.”

The CP3 program, according to the release, “helps to prevent targeted violence and terrorism through funding, training, increased public awareness, and the development of partnerships across every level of the government, the private sector and in local communities across our country. Leveraging an approach informed by public health research, CP3 brings together mental health providers, educators, faith leaders, public health officials, social services, nonprofits, and others in communities across the country to help people who may be escalating to violence.”

This all sounds wonderful, until you figure out that it’s not focused on actual terrorists or drug cartel members who slip into our country every day from across wide-open borders with intent to harm Americans. It’s focused on spying on law-abiding Americans who the government considers dangerous simply because of their views on various political or social issues.

This program, administered by DHS and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) with the full support of Congress, is “the only federal grant program solely dedicated to helping local communities develop and strengthen their capabilities in this area.” 

If your state or locality is receiving money from this program, you may want to investigate further because the abstracts for each grant recipient are composed of extremely vague language (you can see the abstracts of each grant recipient listed at the end of this article).

The 2023 grant program has the following priorities, according to the DHS website:

Implementing Prevention Capabilities in Small and Mid-Sized Communities;
Advancing Equity in Awards and Engaging Underserved Communities in Prevention; 
Addressing Online Aspects of Targeted Violence and Terrorism;
Preventing Domestic Violent Extremism; and 
Enhancing Local Threat Assessment and Management Capabilities.

There are things that could be done to stop mass shootings, but they involve difficult decisions like posting armed guards in front of schools and other “gun free zones” and examining the role of increased use of psychotropic drugs in treating young people, not to mention the nation’s obvious moral decay. It’s much easier to fund, train and weaponize groups to have a political bias and an ax to grind against roughly half the U.S. population.

Below is a full listing of all 34 organizations on the receiving end of the latest round of grants, in alphabetical order, with the information coming directly from the abstracts listed on the DHS website.

Boise State University 

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 4: Youth Resilience Programs 

$265,000.00 

Boise State University will develop a suite of digital products supporting and supplementing human rights education for the secondary grade level (grades 8-12 or ages 13-18) and adult learners. The focus will be on serving underserved, rural communities in the state by designing digital products that use innovative and dynamic approaches to secondary education. These approaches will be aimed at increasing individual resilience to recruitment narratives for hate- and violence-based ideologies, strengthening human rights educational outcomes, and improving individuals’ abilities to understand violent content. Products will be designed with the support and involvement of teachers who will use these classroom resources.

Cherokee Nation 

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 2: Understanding Violent Content 

$290,000.00  

Cherokee Nation will educate and train students, parents, teachers, and community members about violence prevention methods and skills. Cherokee Nation will raise awareness and develop skills to improve school climate and culture. This initiative will provide training for key education stakeholders. Skill development and prevention training facilitated through a School Climate Summit will be held within the Cherokee Nation Reservation.

Colorado Information Analysis Center, Colorado Department of Public Safety 

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 3: Civic Engagement; Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams: Type 6: Bystander Training 

$775,720.00 

The Colorado Information Analysis Center’s Colorado Preventing Targeted Violence (CO-PTV) Program will support violence prevention through multiple avenues. The program will include increasing bystander reporting, supporting new regional targeted violence prevention efforts, and identifying regional champions. The champions will develop behavioral threat assessment and management teams to support and mentor local teams. The program will also connect regional prevention partners to the broader statewide CO-PTV prevention network for greater collaboration and resource sharing.

Connecticut Center for School Safety and Crisis Preparation/ Western Connecticut State University  

Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Team 

$362,655.00 

The Connecticut Center for School Safety and Crisis Preparation and Western Connecticut State University will expand and enhance capacity for schools in Connecticut to manage school-related threats. They will develop threat assessment teams to support districts in their violence prevention and intervention efforts using the Comprehensive School Threat Assessment Guidelines model. The Connecticut Center for School Safety and Crisis Preparation will train staff to consult with schools. Additionally, the Center will partner with Safer Schools Together to address digital threats for schools by developing a template and strategy to help districts address threats. They will help districts build capacity to investigate digital threats on social media platforms and help students and parents identify the risks of cyber threats.

Education Services District 123 (Washington) 

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 2: Understanding Violent Content; Type 3: Civic Engagement; Type 4: Youth Resilience Programs 

$1,185,153.00  

Educational Service District 123, based in Pasco, Washington, will develop two projects providing collaborative solutions that promote learning. The first project will focus on preventing escalation to violence among college students by expanding, supporting, and collaborating with threat assessment and management teams. The second project will focus on preventing escalation to violence among 12-18-year-olds. This project will develop care coordination involving outreach services and case management, youth access to services, parenting and family education, youth resilience programming, and community outreach at school and community events.

Hampton University (Hampton, VA)

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness 

$150,000.00 

Hampton University will develop an evidence-based targeted violence and terrorism prevention (TVTP) plan to raise the Hampton University community’s awareness of the threats posed by various forms of violence. This will include racially motivated violent extremism, terrorism, and gun violence in digital and physical spaces. The project has potential for replication at other Historically Black Colleges and Universities that lack TVTP plans.

Health Quality Partners of Southern California 

Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams 

$231,859.00 

Health Quality Partners of Southern California, also known as Community Clinics Health Network, will increase reporting of concerning behaviors by developing workplace violence prevention and intervention programs and implementing threat management teams across the membership of Health Center Partners of Southern California (HCP). HCP is an organization of primary care health providers that includes Federally Qualified Health Centers and Tribal Health Programs.

John Jay College 

Type 6: Bystander Training 

$126,764.00  

Subject matter experts at John Jay College, New York Presbyterian, and the Center on American Law and Extremism will partner to develop a train-the-trainer pilot project on bystander interventions to prevent targeted violence. The training will focus on recognizing behavioral indicators of mobilization to violence and familiarizing audiences with locally available referral mechanisms. They also will develop and launch a website to serve as a repository of information and a resource for bystander training on targeted violence prevention.

Michigan State Police Michigan Intelligence Operations Center

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness 

$425,845.00 

The Michigan State Police (MSP) Michigan Intelligence Operations Center (MIOC) will deliver in-person community awareness training to 240 law enforcement officers and 5,000 Michigan residents state-wide. They also will create a website and social media campaign and participate in community events to raise awareness of targeted acts of violence in Michigan. They also will raise awareness of how the community can identify and properly refer individuals who may demonstrate behaviors that suggest they may be going down a path toward violence.

Minnesota Department of Public Safety Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management; Type 6: Bystander Training; Type 7: Referral Services 

$700,659.00  

The Minnesota Department of Public Safety’s (DPS) Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) will prevent specified and unspecified targeted violence in the State of Minnesota by establishing a statewide BCA-Threat Assessment and Management Team (BCA-TAMT), developing regional teams, and implementing training and continuing education for law enforcement and appropriate partners, such as officials working within schools, faith-based institutions, and mental health organizations. Subjects of interest to the BCA-TAMT include persons of concern, potential active shooters, school shootings/threats, stalking, and workplace violence. The organization also will deliver in-person and web-based training, as well as continuing education, to assist in the development of TAMTs within Minnesota and enhance situational awareness and knowledge bases related to the prevention of targeted violence.

Minneapolis Health Department 

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 3: Civic Engagement; Type 6: Bystander Training 

$287,147.00 

The Minneapolis Health Department’s Community Partnership to Identify and Prevent Violence Extremism in Minneapolis program will use a community-focused approach to prevent violence. The goal is to decrease risk factors for radicalization and violent extremism to keep communities safe. The project will prevent future acts of violent extremism by working with the community to make a violent extremism awareness campaign. The campaign will build trust within the community and develop local partners’ understanding of the issues by using intentional civic engagement to identify needs and concerns about specific threats. The project will engage the community as partners in prevention by jointly hosting community-specific bystander/upstander training.

Mississippi Office of Homeland Security  

Type 3: Civic Engagement; Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams 

$658,746.00  

The Mississippi Office of Homeland Security (MOHS) will expand two established programs to include a targeted violence and terrorism prevention focus. MOHS will expand its training program to deliver TVTP training to law enforcement, communities, churches, businesses, students, and interested citizens. The training will enhance awareness, strengthen partnerships, and share information to prevent acts of violence and terrorism across Mississippi. A division of MOHA, the Mississippi Analysis and Information Center (MSAIC) will establish threat assessment teams to identify, assess, implement, and manage intervention strategies across Mississippi. The teams will develop a threat assessment framework to identify best practices that are implementable in future programs across Mississippi.

New York Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management 

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management 

$296,566.00 

New York State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services (DHSES) will support the advancement of Threat Assessment and Management (TAM) teams across the state. This initiative will build on work done under FY 2020 and FY 2022 awards, building out targeted violence and domestic terrorism prevention frameworks statewide through the utilization of TAM and the formalization of domestic terrorism prevention efforts and plans within communities across the state. This work is in support of the New York State Targeted Violence Prevention Strategy. DHSES will develop and deliver training programs that fill current capability gaps. Additionally, DHSES will aid existing TAM teams in evaluating their domestic terrorism prevention plans to inform future initiatives and resources.

One World Strong 

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 2: Understanding Violent Content; Type 4: Youth Resilience Programs; Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams; Type 6: Bystander Training; Type 7: Referral Services; Type 8: Recidivism Reduction & Reintegration 

$1,140,067.00 

Boston Tea Leaves will use School Resource Teams, Community Threat Assessment Teams, and City Engagement Forums to support students, teachers, and guidance counselors across Boston Public Schools. They will mitigate a rise in violent extremist challenges in school settings, particularly misogynistic, racially, and ethnically motivated violent extremism. The project will use a public health model to improve safety and provide individualized support for at-risk students. The Boston Tea Leaves program will provide localized information across Boston, better informing city, state, and federal prevention efforts.

Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office 

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 2: Understanding Violent Content; Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams; Type 6: Bystander Training; Type 7: Referral Services; Type 8: Recidivism Reduction & Reintegration 

$600,000.00 

The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office (PBSO) will enhance the Palm Beach County School and Community Violence Prevention Project in partnership with Southeast Florida Behavioral Health Network (SEFBHN) and the 211 HELPLINE, which provides free and confidential crisis and emergency assistance. The project will increase Palm Beach County’s current capacity and evidence-based response strategies. It will expand Palm Beach County’s threat assessment strategy to incorporate bystander training, referral services, and access to programs reducing instances of repeated acts of targeted violence. PBSO also will build a public awareness and community education campaign to enhance Palm Beach County’s capacity to prevent violence.

Parents for Peace 

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams; Type 7: Referral Services 

$832,000.00 

Parents for Peace (P4P) will build awareness about violent extremism, behavioral signs of radicalization, and the P4P helpline. The helpline is a free, confidential helpline for bystanders and individuals needing help. P4P will add a text-based component, increase advertising, and extend helpline hours so more people can get help. P4P also will standardize and add to its intervention services.

Search for Common Ground 

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 3: Civic Engagement; Type 6: Bystander Training 

$505,097.00 

The Rural Peacemakers Project (RPP), which is a partnership between Search for Common Ground and Multi-Faith Neighbors Network, will build resilience to targeted violence and terrorism (TVT) in rural communities in North and Central Texas. By raising awareness among community and faith leaders and facilitating collaborative efforts, RPP will address gaps in existing programs tailored to rural needs. RPP will include conducting community dialogues, training faith leaders to act as key bystanders, fostering both community and individual resilience to TVT, and launching community-led initiatives.

Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 4: Youth Resilience Programs 

$530,000.00 

The Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League (SMYAL) will address the risk of violence and negative mental health outcomes faced by LGBTQ+ youth in D.C. and Montgomery County, MD. SMYAL’s program will employ a community-level and behavioral health approach. The project will provide in-school support for LGBTQ+ youth, training for school staff and youth service providers, resilience programming for LGBTQ+ youth ages 6-24, and support for parents and caregivers.

University of Buffalo, Alberti Center for Bullying Abuse Prevention 

Type 4: Youth Resilience Programs; Type 6: Bystander Training 

$233,955.00 

The University of Buffalo, Alberti Center of Bullying Abuse Prevention will build youth resiliency by implementing NAB IT! (Norms and Bystander Intervention Training) with 200 youth. NAB IT! will help youth identify and respond to bullying, cyberbullying, and sexual harassment. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Bystander Intervention Training, CARE (Communities Acting to Refer and Engage), will be provided to students and school staff to enhance their ability to recognize behaviors that might indicate an individual is escalating to violence and identify appropriate steps to get help. A training component will be included for trainers so NAB IT! can be further shared with small- to mid-sized communities and underserved populations.

University of California, Irvine 

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 2: Understanding Violent Content; Type 3: Civic Engagement; Type 4: Youth Resilience Programs; Type 6: Bystander Training 

$684,006.00  

University of California, Irvine will provide tools and training to K-12 and college students. These tools and training will help students participate in diverse coalitions that reach national audiences using multimedia approaches focused on developing youth resilience to targeted violence and terrorism. Activities will include raising awareness, increasing understanding of violent content, strengthening diverse civic engagement, developing youth resilience to extremism and violence, and empowering communities through bystander training.

University of Colorado Denver 

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness, Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams; Type 6: Bystander Training 

$606,624.00 

The University of Colorado Denver Campus Assessment Response and Evaluation (CARE) Team, a multidisciplinary behavioral intervention and threat assessment team, will partner with on-campus constituents and off-campus experts in threat assessment. They will increase the University of Colorado Denver community’s awareness of targeted violence and terrorism and mechanisms for reporting. They also will enhance engagement in targeted violence and terrorism prevention efforts through bystander intervention trainings. They also will improve CARE Team knowledge and expand community partnerships to serve the needs of underserved students on campus.

University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Medicine 

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 2: Understanding Violent Content; Type 4: Youth Resilience Programs; Type 6: Bystander Training; Type 7: Referral Services 

$981,916.00  

The University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Medicine will partner with clinicians, researchers, and staff from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), DePaul University, Loyola University, and the Illinois Homeland Security Advisory Council to reduce the risk of future violence. This will focus on training and capacity building around diversity, equity, and inclusion practices. These activities will focus on targeted violence and terrorism prevention for community members, frontline practitioners, mental health specialists, and Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management (BTAM) teams. They also will build regional threat assessment and management capacities and refine the tools, guides, and trainings. They also will establish a statewide Illinois Community Safety Committee to assist local prevention and BTAM Team efforts and provide tools, guidance, and training.

University of Texas, El Paso 

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 2: Understanding Violent Content; Type 3: Civic Engagement; Type 4: Youth Resilience Programs 

$296,806.00  

University of Texas, El Paso will leverage and expand REACH (Resilience, Education, Action, Commitment, Humanity) through a national social media campaign and project. The project will focus on countering the rise of online radicalization to violence. The project will take place in El Paso County, San Antonio, Hidalgo County, Texas, Miami Gardens, FL, Camarillo, CA, and Worcester, MA. The social media campaign will include multiple cultures and multiple languages. It also will include topics about Understanding Violent Content, Civil Learning, and Arts-Based Approaches to countering online radicalization to violence.

The University of Vermont 

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 3: Civic Engagement; Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams; Type 6: Bystander Training 

$943,976.00  

The University of Vermont (UVM) will improve violence prevention efforts in Vermont colleges and medium-to-large employers by implementing behavioral threat assessment and management (BTAM) best practices. UVM will provide BTAM training to campus threat assessment and management teams and build social awareness of TVTP among students, faculty, and staff. They will cultivate sustainable partnerships among institutional leaders, law enforcement, community organizations, and emergency management personnel. These objectives will be achieved through campus BTAM capacity building, community awareness through digital asset creation and distribution, and developing sustainable partnerships through a Healthy Communities Symposium.

Urban Rural Action 

Type 1: Raising Societal Awareness; Type 2: Understanding Violent Content; Type 3: Civic Engagement; Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management; Type 7: Referral Services 

$799,201.00 

Urban Rural Action’s Uniting to Prevent Targeted Violence (UPTV) program in Southeast Wisconsin will build a sustainable targeted violence prevention network. This will be done by strengthening social cohesion across communities, increasing community members’ access to prevention services, and increasing community capacity to assess and manage threats. UPTV will form a diverse cohort to build relationships across communities, collaborate with community partners on prevention projects, help form threat assessment and management teams, and raise community awareness of the local prevention network.

Xavier University 

Type 5: Threat Assessment and Management Teams 

$54,000.00 

Ohio K-12 school districts are responsible for providing all children with a safe learning environment. School personnel are required to receive threat assessment training from a provider approved by the Ohio Director of Public Safety. The state of Ohio has 20 approved trainers that are available to train more than 2,000 middle and high schools. This ratio is not sufficient to meet the needs of all Ohio K-12 schools. Xavier University’s project will provide initial and follow-up threat assessment training to all secondary schools in Southwest Ohio and conduct two monthly threat assessment trainings for nine months covering eight southwest Ohio counties, each project year.

Innovation grants

American University Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab 

$784,276.00 

American University’s Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab (PERIL)’s Developing and Using Critical Comprehension (DUCC) program will build resilience against violent content online, focusing on K-5 education. The DUCC project will create multimedia educational materials focused on teaching children in grades K-5 how to recognize harmful online content. The materials will comprise lesson plans, exercises, reflections, videos, and video games. All the materials will be reviewed and evaluated to measure impact. The project will end with the distribution and promotion of the DUCC materials, to support educational institutions.

Boston Children’s Hospital 

$820,990.00  

Boston Children’s Hospital will establish and support local violence prevention efforts, offering training for mental health practitioners in assessing and managing risk for targeted violence and terrorism. They will use the TVT: Strengths, Needs, and Risks Assessment & Management tool (T-SAM), which is a clinical tool for managing risk for violence escalation. The project will provide mental health program support to prevent targeted violence. Boston Children’s Hospital will advance the T-SAM nationwide and develop tools to aid mental health providers in violence prevention.

Columbia University 

$820,332.00 

Columbia University will design an interactive program focused on storytelling for educators and educational staff to learn about strategies to engage in story creation. The project will involve researching, developing, and presenting stories. The project will focus on educational displacement in physical, virtual, and social spaces of learning within and beyond schools. It also will include curating and co-creating educator stories of adapting to challenging situations, supporting the storytelling of educators who bring unifying narratives from their local communities, and leading the sharing of these stories at Teachers College, Columbia University. The program will study and integrate protective storytelling by activating educator voices to amplify protective factors against targeted violence.

Institute for Strategic Dialogue 

$817,129.52 

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, through the Strong Cities Network, which it has managed since its launch in 2015, will work with several partners to fill gaps in existing targeted violence prevention support to smaller cities. Partners include Boston Children’s Hospital, the University of Illinois in Chicago, and the McCain Institute. Support will be provided to Stamford (CT), Golden Valley (MN), San Bernardino (CA), Overland Park (KS), Chattanooga (TN), and Baton Rouge (LA). The project will form local multidisciplinary leadership groups in each city, chaired by the local government. These groups will be trained to understand the targeted violence and navigate existing TVTP resources. The lessons from this effort will be shared with cities across the U.S. This will help other cities to replicate this model.

John McCain Institute 

$770,610.00 

The McCain Institute at Arizona State University, in collaboration with The Reilly Group, Moonshot, and Community Matters, will implement the Youth Upstander Initiative for Targeted Violence Education (UNITE) program. This initiative will promote targeted violence and terrorism prevention resources to increase youth awareness and skills, including toolkits for local campaigns. The program will train middle school-, high school-, and college-aged students. The program will expand the McCain Institute’s Prevention Practitioners Network to involve youth-led organizations in national efforts and enhance school staff awareness of multidisciplinary threat assessment resources.

Peoria Regional Office of Education #48

$691,610.00  

The Peoria Regional Office of Education will advance the Illinois Targeted Violence Prevention Strategy for K-12 students. The strategy was developed through the state’s participation in the National Governor’s Association Policy Academy on Preventing Targeted Violence. The Peoria Regional Office of Education will appoint safety directors at the school community level. These directors will provide resources and coordinate activities focused on violence prevention. This will promote information sharing and centralize resources. The project will demonstrate the importance and feasibility of having K-12 regional safety directors across the state. It will deliver best practices and cost estimates that will be shared with the governor and the Illinois Regional School Superintendents Association to request further funding for safety directors in all K-12 regions in Illinois.

The University of Colorado Boulder 

$868,875.00 

The University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence (CSPV) will partner with the Colorado Information Analysis Center and Colorado Attorney General’s Office to implement innovative tools for threat assessment and management aimed at preventing targeted violence. The two new and untested tools for the assessment and management of those at risk for targeted violence: (a) a protocol for law enforcement professionals to identify and refer persons at risk for targeted violence and (b) a statewide database to track and manage targeted violence cases (e.g., threat assessment). The project’s goals are to deliver training on the newly developed Targeted Violence Lethality Assessment Protocol, conduct a quality improvement evaluation of the TV-LAP’s implementation and impact, and design and implement a secure statewide Targeted Violence Case Management Database. Training on TV-LAP will enhance law enforcement officers’ ability to identify and refer threatening individuals for services. The statewide database will be used to standardize threat assessment and management and promote information sharing. Training for community teams will be included. CSPV will also conduct a quality improvement evaluation of the database’s implementation and impact.

University of North Dakota 

$386,682.78 

The University of North Dakota will create a new cultural module within the “Be Students Empowering and Encouraging Native Nations” (Be SEENN) project. Initiated in Spring 2022, Be SEENN provides education about Indigenous cultures. The free online module will raise awareness of targeted violence and gather information on participants’ perceptions and intended actions regarding race. One of the goals is that the educational module expands understanding of Indigenous culture and promote conversations about peace and nonviolence.