Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women, and hosted by the Law Enforcement Training and Technical Assistance Consortium (LETTAC) and the Domestic Violence Resource for Increasing Safety and Connection (DV RISC), this webinar will help participants to advance safety, justice, and healing for victims and survivors in their communities. At the intersection of critical justice priorities—support for America’s law enforcement agencies to combat gender-based crimes (including homicide) and the national violence epidemic—practitioners now have new opportunities for tailored assistance. During this no-cost, open-to-the-public event, participants will learn how DV RISC and LETTAC can support them, their projects, partners and stakeholders, and their communities in addressing gender-based violence. 

When: Thursday, February 24, 2022
Time: 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m., ET

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced a new initiative, Operation Overdrive, aimed at combatting the rising rates of drug-related violent crime and overdose deaths plaguing American communities. Last fall, the DEA initiated a data-driven approach using national crime statistics and CDC data to identify hot spots of drug-related violence and overdose deaths across the country.  This will enable the agency to direct its law enforcement resources to areas where they will have the most impact: the communities where criminal drug networks are causing the most harm. Operation Overdrive, which launched on February 1, 2022, uses a data-driven, intelligence-led approach to identify and dismantle criminal drug networks operating in areas with the highest rates of violence and overdoses. DEA, working in partnership with its fellow federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, has mapped the threats and initiated enforcement operations against those networks in 34 locations across 23 states in the initial phase of Operation Overdrive.

Developed by the Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) Training and Technical Assistance and funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, the Gun Violence Resource Hub (GBRH) has officially launched and is now available.  The GVRH is a compilation of approaches from across the nation to combating gun violence.  It includes approaches that are implemented by law enforcement agencies as well as a broad range of other organizations such as hospitals, community organizations, and prosecutors’ offices.  Included are approaches that have been evaluated and are considered promising or effective in reducing gun violence.  Promising programs have some evidence that they achieve their intended outcomes, and effective programs have strong evidence that they achieve their intended outcomes.

Published by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) and in partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security, this resource is provided to inform law enforcement, terrorism prevention practitioners, other first responders, and community leaders, as well as the general public, about both threats of violence and contextual behaviors that suggest an individual is mobilizing to violence.  While some violent extremists may make direct, indirect, or vague threats of violence, others may plot violent action while avoiding such overt threats to maintain operational security—underscoring the need to consider both threats of violence and contextual behaviors.  The indicators included in this booklet are intended to aid law enforcement and first-responder investigative and detection efforts, not to be a substitute for these agencies’ expertise and experience.  

Published by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), this report discusses public mass shootings in the United States over the last half-century.  The shooters were commonly troubled by personal trauma before their shooting incidents, nearly always in a state of crisis at the time, and, in most cases, engaged in leaking their plans before opening fire.  Most were insiders of targeted institutions, such as employees or students.  Except for young school shooters who stole the guns from family members, most used legally obtained handguns in these shootings.  With support from the NIJ, The Violence Project database has drawn data exclusively from open sources such as social media sites and online newspapers.  The aim is to build a broader understanding on the part of the public, the justice system, and the research community of who mass shooters are and what motivates their decisions to discharge firearms at multiple people.