Beyond the Numbers: The Case for Behavioral Threat Assessment in Toledo’s Fight Against Gun Violence

garzaj25
Dec 13, 2025
4 min read

The National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform report—Toledo, Ohio Cost of Gun Violence paints a stark picture of the human and economic toll that firearm violence imposes on our community. According to recent data, Toledo continues to grapple with high rates of fatal and nonfatal shootings, averaging dozens each year with skyrocketing costs to taxpayers, public services, and neighborhood wellbeing.

However, this report did not address another underlying problem Toledo faces with regard to gun violence, suicide by firearm. According to recent mortality data provided by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Toledo experienced 168 “gun deaths” as result of suicide from 2020-2024. What’s more, the long-term repercussions stretch far beyond the immediate emergency response: trauma, loss of productivity, eroding property values, and communities living with ongoing stress, fear and grief.

These realities force us to confront a tough truth: reactive responses alone aren’t enough. Emergency services, policing, incarceration, and crime scene management address the aftermath, not the cause. To create sustainable, long-term safety and significantly reduce these costs, both human and financial, Toledo needs robust prevention strategies that intervene before violence occurs.

Why Prevention Must Go Beyond Enforcement

Traditional strategies, i.e., increased patrols, tougher sentencing, or increased surveillance, serve an important function in law enforcement but often fail to diminish the underlying drivers of violence. They typically do not address:

Why individuals come to consider violence in the first place
The warning behaviors that often precede violent acts
Behavioral health struggles, risk factors or triggers/stressors
Trauma and its ripple effects throughout families and neighborhoods

This is where behavioral threat assessment and management (BTAM) offers a transformative approach.

Understanding Behavioral Threat Assessment and Management

Behavioral threat assessment is a systematic, evidence-based process designed to identify individuals whose behavior suggests a heightened risk of violence, not just to punish, but to understand, evaluate, and intervene in ways that prevent harm. It involves:

Gathering and interpreting information about concerning behavior
Evaluating risk factors and protective factors
Engaging multidisciplinary teams of professionals
Tailoring interventions that reduce risk and connect individuals with support services

This approach is widely used in schools, universities, workplaces, and community settings to identify and manage threats before they become violent acts.

Unlike reactionary tactics, threat assessments seek patterns of escalation including grief, obsession with violence, hostile communications, leaked plans, homicidal/suicidal ideation, and aim to intervene early.

Behavioral Threat Assessment in Violence Prevention

Here’s what makes threat assessment critical in a comprehensive violence prevention strategy:

1. It Identifies Risk Before Violence Occurs

Research shows that targeted violence is almost always planned and signaled in advance, whether through words, behaviors, or changes in personality and social connections. Behavioral threat assessment doesn’t try to predict the unpredictable, it looks for evidence-based indicators of concerning escalation and addresses them early.

2. It Brings Multiple Perspectives Together

Behavioral threat assessment teams (BTATs) are multidisciplinary, consisting of law enforcement, behavioral health professionals, educators, and social workers that collaborate to make informed decisions. This reduces reliance on any single viewpoint and creates holistic understanding and creates a culture of shared responsibility.

3. It Reduces Reliance on Punitive Responses

Rather than defaulting to suspension, arrest, or exclusion, which are responses that can exacerbate alienation, threat assessments emphasize support and intervention. Research in school contexts indicates this approach can help reduce racial disparities in discipline outcomes and improve access to support services.

4. It Builds a Culture of Reporting

Threat assessment systems encourage bystanders to report concerns, reducing the so-called “code of silence” or “snitches get stitches” mentality that often shields dangerous intentions. Strengthening these reporting channels enables early action and shifts community norms toward collective safety.

How This Could Help Toledo

Applying behavioral threat assessment principles citywide, in schools, workplaces, faith institutions, and community organizations (e.g. libraries) could:

Stop violent acts before they happen
Connect individuals in crisis to behavioral health and support services
Reduce community trauma and the downstream social costs of violence
Help shift from crisis management to proactive prevention

For a city still dealing with the lingering economic and emotional cost of gun violence, this shift isn’t just strategic, it’s essential.

The Bottom Line

Prevention isn’t optional, it’s necessary. These reports from Toledo reinforce that the price of only responding to and recovering from acts of violence (self-directed or towards others) is steep: millions in public funds, countless hours of response, and too many lives altered forever. But there’s hope. By embracing behavioral threat assessment and prevention strategies, Toledo can chart a path toward a safer, healthier, and more resilient community, one that addresses violence before it emerges, not only after it leaves its mark.

If Toledo can reduce its gun violence rate by even a modest amount, the savings, both economic and human, could be profound. But real change requires a shift in mindset: toward early identification, collaborative intervention, and holistic prevention. That shift begins with understanding that violence isn’t an isolated event, it’s a process, and it can be disrupted.