Application of the Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP-18) to the case of the Army-Navy recruiting center attacker in Little Rock, Arkansas

Abstract

ABSTRACT We applied the path to intended violence (PTIV) [Calhoun, F. S., & Weston, S. W. (2003). Contemporary threat management: A practical guide for identifying, assessing, and managing individuals of violent intent. Specialized Training Services] model and the Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP-18; [Meloy, J. R. (2017). The TRAP-18 manual version 1.0. Washington, DC: Global Institute of Forensic Research]) to study the case of a lone-actor jihadist who carried out a fatal shooting at a joint Army-Navy recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas, on 1 June 2009. The PTIV model examines incidents using six progressive stages: grievance; violent ideation; researching and planning; preparation; probing and breaching; and attack [Calhoun, F. S., & Weston, S. W. (2003). Contemporary threat management: A practical guide for identifying, assessing, and managing individuals of violent intent. Specialized Training Services]. The TRAP-18 is a structured professional judgment tool and comprises 18 behavior-based warning signs for terror incidents. The findings from the retroactive application of the TRAP-18, in this case, show that in the week before the attack, the perpetrator exhibited 5 of the 8 proximal warning behaviors and 5 of the 10 distal warning behaviors. The retroactive application of the TRAP-18 and PTIV to cases of targeted violence assists with identifying a timeline of behaviors, which in turn provides insight into the pathway to violence and warning signs that someone may be a threat of violence.