News

Justice and Security Institute to Provide Threat Assessment Training for Local Organizations

Roberts Wesleyan College is offering threat assessment training and management strategies for schools, colleges and workplaces through the college’s Justice and Security Institute (JSI). The training will be led by Joe Testani, director of the JSI and former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) employee with more than 32 years of experience, and Mark Concordia, Association of Threat Assessment Professionals (ATAP) certified threat manager and director of the Homeland Security & Applied Intelligence program at Roberts Wesleyan College.

“We are focused on training and consulting services that will help organizations respond effectively to threats and crisis situations,” JSI Director Joe Testani said. “That includes social issues of intended violence that manifests in workplaces and educational institutions such as mass shootings, domestic violence, targeted homicide, terrorism and hate crimes.”

The training offered by the JSI includes basic, advanced and customized options:

• Threat Assessment and Management Strategies for schools, colleges, and the workplace to ensure safe learning environments and facilitate information sharing with public safety professionals.
• Basic School Threat Assessment and Management which provides a general awareness of the fundamentals of school threat assessment and management. 
• Advanced training to provide the knowledge, tools, and resources necessary for agencies, schools, and communities to create and sustain multidisciplinary threat assessment and management teams. This training goes beyond awareness and emphasizes threat assessment and team management processes that can be integrated into current school safety and security programs.  
• Behavioral threat assessment, threat management and violence prevention.
• Conducting practical training, operational guidance and providing strategies on ways to assess threats and identify indicators of targeted violence for law enforcement, campus and private security.
• Strategic assessment and analysis of current team functions and recommendations for enhancing the organization’s threat assessment and management processes.
• Table-top exercises on an array of simulated threats including the opportunity to handle a threat case(s) from start to finish.

Sessions are available in half-day or full-day sessions, and the comprehensive training for K-12 schools to set up a threat assessment team is 20 hours. The training includes a variety of topics related to the discipline of behavioral threat assessment as a necessary component of an overall safety and targeted violence prevention program. The exercises lead participants through multiple scenarios with different fact patterns, providing participants with the opportunity to practice managing threat cases from start to finish, and better understand their roles and responsibilities.

Threat assessment training is appropriate for K-12 schools, colleges and universities, law enforcement and security professionals, businesses and organizations, and prominent individuals. Previous clients include the Canandaigua, Fairport, Greece and Spencerport school districts, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, and police departments of Greece, Ogden and Fairport.

“JSI provided the Fairport Police Department with an incredible perspective and valued training on the principles of threat assessment and the ability to have a functioning threat assessment team,” said Fairport Village Police Chief Samuel A. Farina, Jr. “We are fortunate to have this invaluable academic resource in our community to ensure our community’s security and safety.

For additional information on training, assessments and pricing contact the JSI at jsi@roberts.edu. For more information about the Justice and Security Institute, click here.