Article written by Rick Shaw
Violence Prevention Expert
Preventing incidents is always better than responding to them. That’s something everyone can agree upon. But with the increasing number of shootings, acts of violence, and other incidents, it’s evident that something is missing. Better Pre-Incident Prevention is critical.
Pre-Incident Prevention involves identifying individuals who are exhibiting concerning behaviors, suspicious activities, warning signs, cries for help, and leakage related to grievances and stressors. Once identified, First Preventers can assess and investigate current and previous behaviors and intervene, disrupt, and prevent each at-risk individual from escalating and showing up at the front door of your organization.
Pre-Incident Prevention is different from Incident Mitigation and Post-Incident Recovery. Each is critical, and each needs to be better to ensure better safety for students, employees, and community members.
However, research data and facts reveal that there are 8 common problems that must be solved. These common problems create dangerous blind spots and require new solutions to help schools, workplaces, and communities address soaring numbers of at-risk individuals.
The First Preventers Model is a proven and comprehensive solution developed using data and facts and lessons learned from 20+ years of shootings, violence, abuse, drug overdoses, suicides, bullying, and other incidents. The model consists of advanced strategies and specialized tools to help schools, higher education, workplaces, law enforcement, and communities address common and recurring problems, improve pre-incident prevention, and address numerous related challenges and liabilities caused by outdated solutions and opinions.
Data and facts reveal multiple common problems with pre-incident prevention and failures to stop/prevent shootings, violence, acts of evil/hate, drug overdoses, suicides, and numerous other incidents. These common problems keep resource teams (threat, behavioral, WPV, etc.) from seeing the bigger picture and then they are blamed for not taking intervention and prevention actions and even sued for negligence.
The First Preventers Model is currently utilized by early adopters in schools, higher education, workplaces, law enforcement, and communities across the USA. It’s time to embrace new solutions and better prevention techniques to ensure the safety of everyone.
Preventing incidents should be a top priority for all organizations. Better Pre-Incident Prevention is critically needed, and the First Preventers Model can help address this need. It’s time to act and create a safer environment for everyone.
To learn more about the First Preventers Model, visit ASPP’s partner website https://www.awareity.com/.
About Rick Shaw
Rick Shaw founded Awareity in 2004 and is the CEO. Rick also founded First Preventers, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, in 2019. Rick is a Pre-Incident Prevention Expert, author of The First Preventers Playbook, and Prevention Coach to leaders of schools, universities, organizations, and communities.
Rick’s passion is identifying innovative ways of preventing incidents before they occur. This passion for pre-incident prevention helped Rick take a different path when he began conducting extensive research of hundreds and hundreds of post-incident reports since the Columbine School Massacre in 1999. Rather than looking for a profile of the attackers (which most reports have found does not exist), Rick was looking for the Profile of the Failed Preventions, and while other experts had already identified a Pathway to Violence, Rick was identifying the Pathway to Prevention.
Rick Shaw is a pre-incident prevention expert and his visionary prevention innovations have been recognized with the Risk Innovator award from Risk & Insurance Magazine, Responsibility Leader award from Liberty Mutual, Business Innovation award from Business Insurance, Campus Safety BEST Award from Campus Safety Magazine, and MVP Award from Security Sales & Integration Magazine for the top Central Station/Monitoring Platform.
