Ontario County Sheriff’s Office Forms New Multi-Disciplinary Threat Assessment Committee

The Ontario County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday announced the formation of the Ontario County Threat Assessment Committee (OCTAC), a new multi-agency committee tasked with preventing and responding to targeted violence.

In May 2022, Governor Kathy Hochul issued Executive Order 18 following the deadly shooting at Tops in Buffalo. The order directed all counties in New York State to develop a comprehensive plan to detect and manage acts of domestic terrorism in their counties by December 2022.

Ontario County Sheriff David Cirencione said Ontario County quickly got to work developing a plan to train law enforcement, mental health professionals, school districts, social services, probation officers and other key stakeholders to address the rise in domestic terrorism. He said they’ve learned nationally that in these mass shootings, there are almost always multiple people who are aware of parts of the shooter’s plans before they happen. Cirencione said there’s a lack of cooperation and communication between those with information, which is often how those plans turn into violence.

For this reason, the OCTAC system was developed and launched to encourage people who have information about someone who may intend to do harm to report such information.

Since the beginning of this school year, Cirencione said OCTAC has uncovered and de-escalated about five incidents involving students as a result of these trainings. According to Cirencione, OCTAC’s investigations into these incidents involving minors have shown that these incidents were more of a cry for attention than any real intent to carry out actual violence.

“But that’s our job, to investigate and make a decision, and our goal here today is to let everyone know that we have a dedicated team in this county that will do that,” Cirencione said. “The collaboration and sharing of that information allowed us to take action that we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to take because we knew the full story.”

The goal of OCTAC, Cirencione said, is not only to prevent these acts of violence, but also to get information early enough to intervene with resources to divert most of these potential perpetrators from the criminal justice system. Those resources could look like mental health detention, increased mental health counseling and services, and in the case of minors, parental intervention so these individuals can get the help they need before they escalate to acts of violence.

OCTAC: What agencies are involved?

OCSO Lt. Keith Green said 150 people in Ontario County have been trained in threat assessments so far. Those agencies include law enforcement, mental health professionals, probation officers, social services, school personnel, the district attorney’s office, the county attorney’s office, the public defender’s office, businesses, local and county government officials and local nonprofits.

According to County Administrator Chris Debolt, this type of inter-agency cooperative relationship in Ontario County predates Executive Order 18. The Campbell Commission, chaired and headed by West Bloomfield Town Supervisor Todd Campbell, has been the county’s cooperative entity for 10 years.

“When Gov. Hochul issued Executive Order 18 in the wake of the Buffalo Tops tragedy, that group was already established here in Ontario County,” Debolt said. “Those relationships were already established, and we had the usual disparities, like the district attorney and the public defender, who were used to sitting down together and working on things together.”

Christopher Barnard, superintendent of the Manchester-Shortsville Central School District, said the initiative is a proactive step toward creating a safer and more welcoming learning environment for all nine school districts and the more than 14,000 students they serve across Ontario County.

“The spillover effects of this initiative will extend far beyond the walls of our schools,” Barnard said. “We are building a community where everyone—students, staff, families, and the community—can feel safe and supported.”

Lt. Green said there were five two-day threat assessment training sessions with a certified threat manager from At Risk International. The sessions focused on the basics of threat assessment and how it affects different organizations. Participants learned how to identify steps along the path to violence, or steps a person takes toward a plan for targeted violence.

“If you see anything, let me know.”

In some domestic cases of mass shootings, individuals who may have had information about planned acts of violence have been held liable under both criminal and civil laws.

Most recently, the father of the Apalachee High School shooting suspect was charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of child abuse, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. In other cases, people in school districts that are required to report have faced criminal or civil charges for failing to report certain information that led to a targeted act of violence.

“The bottom line is that in each of these incidents, people knew something and didn’t say something,” Sheriff Cirencione said. “That’s the culture we need to change so we can address this.”

In addition to the few incidents involving students that have come up during these trainings, Sheriff Cirencione said there have also been some assessments of threats to adults in the community that were just as valid. All of those cases have led to some kind of successful action by the committees to mitigate the threats, he said.

Many of these cases, according to Sheriff Cirencione, have resulted from tips from people in the community, which underscores the importance of community involvement in staying vigilant in these situations. The OCSO app, available in the Apple App Store and Google Play, has a tab in the resources section where people in the community can fill out a threat assessment form that will be sent directly to Lt. Green. If you are unable to download or access the app, Sheriff Cirencione said to call 911 and dispatchers will route the tip to where it needs to go.

“That’s the bottom line, if you see something, speak up,” Cirencione said. “If there’s someone you know who you’re concerned about, who’s showing signs of behavioral changes and you’re concerned they might be headed toward violence, call 911.”

Cirencione said it’s always safer to report than to assume nothing happened in these cases and situations. OCTAC is designed to foster a safe and collaborative environment where the community is encouraged to be vigilant and report information before it escalates into violence.

Any company or organization that has not received threat assessment training but would like to receive it is asked to contact Lt. Green to arrange for it. The non-emergency number for OCSO is (585)394-4560 or you can fill out a contact form on the sheriff’s website.

— Madison Scott is a reporter at the Democrat and Chronicle who edited and reported on our Weld Street Project. She is interested in how the system helps or fails to help families who are missing loved ones. She can be reached at [email protected].

This article originally appeared in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Ontario County launches new multidisciplinary threat assessment committee