Summit to Help Workplaces, Schools, Campuses and Government Facilities Prevent Violence

SPRINGFIELD – A behavioral threat assessment summit to be held Nov. 5 in Addison will help employers, school and campus officials, and government agencies develop tools to assess threats or concerning behavior and form behavioral threat assessment teams to help prevent violence.

The summit, sponsored by the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA) and the Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System (ILEAS), will be held from 8:00 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Medinah Shrine Center, 550 Shriners Drive in Addison.

“We’ve seen violence far too many times in the workplace, in schools, on college campuses and at military bases and government offices,” said IEMA Director Jonathon Monken.  “While we can’t erase these tragic events, we can take the lessons learned and use them to educate key officials on how to prevent future tragedies.”

Monken said investigations into violent events, such as the 2013 shootings at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. and the 2012 shootings at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., have found that concerns were raised about the perpetrator’s behavior before these tragedies occurred.

The summit will offer four separate training tracks focusing on violence in the workplace, on campuses, in K-12 schools and in military and governmental facilities.  The presentations will educate officials on how to identify, investigate and assess situations and intervene to prevent attacks.  Each track will focus on best practices from previous events and provide guidance for developing threat assessment teams specific to the participants’ area of interest. A similar summit was held in November 2013 in Normal.
 
"ILEAS is pleased to team with IEMA to offer this critical training, which will provide participants with the tools and information they need to increase school, campus and workplace safety in Illinois," said ILEAS Executive Director Jim Page.

Participation in the summit is limited to the first 450 registrants.  Registration is available at http://iema.illinois.gov/iema/training/behaviorsummit.