By SHANNON O. WELLS
One day after Pitt’s Scott Argiro briefed the Student Admissions, Aid and Affairs (SAAA) Committee on the Threat Assessment and Management Team‘s mission and approaches on Dec. 13, a mass shooting took place at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. A gunman entered the school and killed two students and wounded nine others who were taking part in a review session for fall semester final exams.
The suspected shooter, a former grad student at Brown, was found dead in Salem, N.H., on Dec. 18. Claudio Neves Valente, 48, also has been linked to the death of MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro, who was found dead in his Brookline, Mass., home on Dec. 15.
Despite their horrific nature, Argiro, Pitt’s threat assessment coordinator, said incidents of university campus violence provide an opportunity for his team to strengthen its procedures and strategies through study and analysis of what transpired and how safety and law enforcement responded.
“We are deeply saddened by the acts of violence that have occurred recently at campuses across our nation,” he told the University Times on behalf of the team. “Through our professional networks and associations, we seek to learn about these types of incidents, evaluate our own crisis communications and operational protocols, and work with our teams toward enhancing Pitt’s security and preparedness.”
Such “case studies” allow a focus on messaging, external communications and overall responses, among other things, he added.
Argiro’s information about spotting and reacting to threat indicators and warning signs was integrated into the presentation he shared with SAAA on Dec. 12, which echoed much of what he delivered to the Campus Utilization Planning and Safety Committee (CUPS) meeting on Oct. 7.
Mandated by the Department of Education, the Threat Assessment and Management Team was initiated and organized by Ted Fritz, vice chancellor for public safety and emergency management.
Following 23 years at the FBI, Argiro was named threat assessment coordinator at Pitt, where he leads the University’s Department of Integrated Security, including oversight of security systems and protocols, threat assessments and security team management.
In presentations to CUPS and SAAA, he emphasized the importance of vigilance and reporting unusual or concerning signs.
“In addition to the threat assessment in the process, I’d like to talk a little bit about what gets us there — what are the warning signs and to create an awareness all across the University,” he told the SAAA committee. “I work with a lot of committees and groups, and even if it’s just a department, I like to say, ‘Hey, look. What can you do to identify these threats? What can you do to make our campus a safer place?’ It’s really identifying threats early on.”
In 90% percent of all threats and critical incidents, there is what Argiro called “leakage. And it’s not a pleasant word … (but) one that sticks in your mind. The leakage is actual verbal or some type of physical sign where someone is in distress, or having notions of some ideology or some grievance,” he said. “And it gets out, and you hear it publicly in the press as a red flag.”
These can come in “any manner of ways. It could be a person moves into isolation. A person becomes highly agitated, easily agitated. Just the change in behavior is what you’re looking for, and there’s usually a cause that creates that effect,” he added.
“Anchor” is another threat assessment team term Argiro shared.
“When we can make a referral, or when we can identify a problem early on, it usually involves some type of an anchor, whether it’s a religious connection … a teacher, a family member … but we want to bring somebody on board to let them know people are out of sorts, and they need to be brought back,” he said. “Lots of times, people need assistance with it, and it can be professional counseling as well.
“But this is the pathway that we look for … and it is a progressive pathway.”
Grievances as fuel
That pathway starts, he explained, with “some type of grievance or ideology.”
It’s in this “grievance or ideology phase” that signs of distress or resentment appear — often from “some type of fuel; social or political view” that becomes overwhelming to the person. “And that’s when people start not thinking clearly and start taking on violence as their ideation, and that’s when they resort to this as ‘How we’re going to solve the problem?’ and that’s when it gets dangerous.”
From there, Argiro said threat team members start to look for other signs of planning and preparation. “‘Have they identified a target, a location? Is it someone who’s been fired from a location? Are they going to come back to that location when they shouldn’t have? You’ve already been terminated … why are you still showing up here? Why are you hanging out on the park bench out front?’
“That’s unusual behavior, right?”
Individuals may monitor “comings and goings,” he added. “‘Are they looking for that supervisor and maybe who’s changed the shift? Are they trying to identify if that is something new, and then they’re going to identify (that) that’s the time they’re going to make the plan the attack — and then the preparation.’”
He called the gathering of materials or weapons, planning, transportation, and training, typically “all very cliché.”
“All of this is very laid out. Some of these individuals … will create a manifesto. I’ve seen some of the worst manifestos you can imagine,” Argiro said, referring to high-profile active shooter incidents in Buffalo, N.Y.; New Zealand; and at the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill in October 2018.
“The top shooter in Buffalo area, the New Zealand shooter, they’ve all created these manifestos … They’ve created some presence,” he noted.
“They’ve established some reason and cause, and they leave a trail behind. And some of them are very clear. The local one was more of a lone wolf, but he aspired to be others, and then others aspired to be him,” he said. “It’s demented.”
Law enforcement, he added, doesn’t use shooters’ names “because we don’t want to give them any credit for these heinous acts. You may refer the incidents, but not the individual,” he said.
Observe and report
Argiro emphasized the urgency of reporting any warning signs as soon as possible.
“The sooner you see something, the sooner you say something, the sooner you provide some information to law enforcement, we can start that threat assessment and pull of our resources together,” he said.
Information and concerns can be reported by visiting the Threat Assessment and Management Team website, calling Pitt Police at 412-624-2121, city of Pittsburgh Police at 911, the non-emergency line at 412-624-4288, using the anonymous tip line or download the Rave Guardian App.
Responding to a question during the SAAA meeting about the team’s role in promoting mental health resources or other possibly preventive information, Argiro noted that the team is more focused on sharing real-time information and pursuing investigations.
“We want to put out information to the point where we let you know there’s no threat,” he said. “If there’s an instance where there’s a police response, we’re quick to say, ‘Hey, there’s no active threat. There’s a police investigation going on.’
The team, however, must be mindful of an active investigation, and we have to be mindful of people’s personal crisis as well,” he added. “It’s a very tough arena to swim in, and we try to create as much awareness we can.”
Shannon Wells is a University Times reporter. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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