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Here is the point I like to emphasize, especially to the thousands of police officers and soldiers I speak to each year. In nature the sheep, real sheep, are born as sheep. Sheepdogs are born that way, and so are wolves. They didn't have a choice. But you are not a critter. As a human being, you can be whatever you want to be. It is a conscious, moral decision.

If you want to be a sheep, then you can be a sheep and that is okay, but you must understand the price you pay. When the wolf comes, you and your loved ones are going to die if there is not a sheepdog there to protect you. If you want to be a wolf, you can be one, but the sheepdogs are going to hunt you down and you will never have rest, safety, trust or love. But if you want to be a sheepdog and walk the warrior's path, then you must make a conscious and moral decision every day to dedicate, equip and prepare yourself to thrive in that toxic, corrosive moment when the wolf comes knocking at the door.

For example, many officers carry their weapons in church? They are well concealed in ankle holsters, shoulder holsters or inside-the-belt holsters tucked into the small of their backs? Anytime you go to some form of religious service, there is a very good chance that a police officer in your congregation is carrying. You will never know if there is such an individual in your place of worship, until the wolf appears to massacre you and your loved ones.

I was training a group of police officers in Texas, and during the break, one officer asked his friend if he carried his weapon in church. The other cop replied, "I will never be caught without my gun in church." I asked why he felt so strongly about this, and he told me about a cop he knew who was at a church massacre in Ft. Worth, Texas in 1999. In that incident, a mentally deranged individual came into the church and opened fire, gunning down fourteen people. He said that officer believed he could have saved every life that day if he had been carrying his gun. His own son was shot, and all he could do was throw himself on the boy's body and wait to die. That cop looked me in the eye and said, "Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself after that?"

Some individuals would be horrified if they knew this police officer was carrying a weapon in church. They might call him paranoid and would probably scorn him. Yet these same individuals would be enraged and would call for "heads to roll" if they found out that the airbags in their cars were defective, or that the fire extinguisher and fire sprinklers in their kids' school did not work. They can accept the fact that fires and traffic accidents can happen and that there must be safeguards against them.

Their only response to the wolf, though, is denial, and all too often their response to the sheepdog is scorn and disdain. But the sheepdog quietly asks himself, "Do you have and idea how hard it would be to live with yourself if your loved ones attacked and killed, and you had to stand there helplessly because you were unprepared for that day?"

It is denial that turns people into sheep. Sheep are psychologically destroyed by combat because their only defense is denial, which is counterproductive and destructive, resulting in fear, helplessness and horror when the wolf shows up.

Denial kills you twice. It kills you once, at your moment of truth when you are not physically prepared: you didn't bring your gun, you didn't train. Your only defense was wishful thinking. Hope is not a strategy. Denial kills you a second time because even if you do physically survive, you are psychologically shattered by your fear helplessness and horror at your moment of truth.

Gavin de Becker puts it like this in
Fear Less,
his superb post-9/11 book, which should be required reading for anyone trying to come to terms with our current world situation: "... denial can be seductive, but it has an insidious side effect. For all the peace of mind deniers think they get by saying it isn't so, the fall they take when faced with new violence is all the more unsettling." Denial is a save-now-pay-later scheme, a contract written entirely in small print, for in the long run, the denying person knows the truth on some level.

And so the warrior must strive to confront denial in all aspects of his life, and prepare himself for the day when evil comes. If you are warrior who is legally authorized to carry a weapon and you step outside without that weapon, then you become a sheep, pretending that the bad man will not come today. No one can be "on" 24/7, for a lifetime. Everyone needs down time. But if you are authorized to carry a weapon, and you walk outside without it, just take a deep breath, and say this to yourself...

"Baa."

This business of being a sheep or a sheep dog is not a yes-no dichotomy. It is not an all-or-nothing, either-or choice. It is a matter of degrees, a continuum. On one end is an abject, head-in-the-sand-sheep and on the other end is the ultimate warrior. Few people exist completely on one end or the other. Most of us live somewhere in between. Since 9-11 almost everyone in America took a step up that continuum, away from denial. The sheep took a few steps toward accepting and appreciating their warriors, and the warriors started taking their job more seriously. The degree to which you move up that continuum, away from sheephood and denial, is the degree to which you and your loved ones will survive, physically and psychologically at your moment of truth.

Appendix 13

MAPP-MOSAIC for Assessment of Public-figure Pursuit, Circa 1997
by Lieutenant Thomas A. Taylor, Missouri State Highway Patrol, President, National Governor's Security Association: 1994-1997

An Innovative Approach to Threat Assessment

We are all dangerous. Everyone is capable of great violence at a moment's notice, under the right conditions, and in the absence of inhibitors. Law enforcement officers are expected to assess dangerous situations everyday. They are called upon to assess the value of threats and level of risk present in situations involving domestic violence, workplace violence, and public figure protection situations.

The protection of public figures consists of two interrelated functions. The first, to provide a ring of physical protection around the public figure to guard against intentional harm. This ring of security is usually obvious to the observer, consisting of bodyguards, fenced compounds, metal detectors, and armored vehicles. There is another, less observable, function to protection that is just as important -- if not more so. That is the threat assessment function. Threat assessment and management involves the investigation and analysis of situations and individuals that may pose a threat to a person in public or private life. It includes strategies for monitoring, controlling, and redirecting the interest of the pursuer. The ultimate goal of an effective threat assessment and management process is to identify and stop a person with hostile intentions before putting the public figure at risk.

An exciting threat assessment methodology emerged nearly twenty years ago with the development of the MOSAIC threat assessment system by Gavin de Becker and Associates, a California-based security consulting firm.

Today, after many enhancements, MOSAIC is an important part of the threat management programs for the state police agencies protecting a dozen governors, the twenty-five leading university police departments, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, the United States Supreme Court Police, the United States Marshals Service, the United States Capitol Police, the Federal Reserve Board, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency. After a decade of one version of MOSAIC for the assessment of threats to public figures, a totally revised version called MAPP has been made available to law enforcement agencies. Here is a review of MAPP, the MOSAIC for the Assessment of Public-figure Pursuit.

What is MAPP?

MAPP is a threat assessment method, part of which is computer-assisted. It is not a computer program or database for storing information. It is to the threat assessor what a word processor is to an author. The word processor doesn't write the book, but it aids the author in doing so. MAPP is an advanced system that brings insight and organization to assessments of people who came to attention as being among those who might attempt inappropriate encounters. It is not a profiling tool or a crystal ball to predict the future. In fact, it is the opposite of profiling. Profiles are often collections of demographic factors. MAPP is never concerned with such things as race, appearance, socioeconomic level, or gender. MAPP explores only behavior and circumstance. MAPP explores literally hundreds of factors, circumstances, behaviors, elements of communications, and aspects of a situation. MAPP evaluates situations, not people. It does not characterize someone as "dangerous," a vague and misleading term. Neither the word nor the concept appears within MOSAIC systems.

MAPP Start-Up

MAPP is a Windows-based, easy-to-use system, requiring only a basic understanding of computer operations. A first-time user will be taught the system through an on-line academy, which thoroughly explains assessment strategies and the operation of MAPP. This process takes about twenty minutes. Upon completion, you will be assigned a password to by-pass the academy in subsequent sessions. There is a refresher course for those who are just getting started or haven't used MOSAIC in awhile.

MAPP Template

The next decision you must make is which MOSAIC template to select. This article is a review of only the MAPP system for public figure threats, but there are MOSAIC systems to cover a number of other situations, including domestic violence, threats by students (both pre-college and university age), and workplace violence.

Let's say that you want to assess a situation in which a man has threatened to kill the governor. The MAPP template contains twenty-nine areas of inquiry, and offers a range of one hundred and twenty possible answers or cells (see
Figure 1
). You move down each line, selecting the cell that most closely describes your situation. For example, one line inquires,
"Has the pursuer recently experienced stressful life events?
" The inquiry thoroughly defines stressful life events, and offers a range of five possible answers, from "no," to "within the past 30 days." Other lines inquire about weapons, the nature of the threat, mental health history, location, travel, employment, financial status, police record, and residency.

This systematic approach to an assessment insures a consistent and thorough evaluation in each and every case. The threat to the city councilman is given the same consideration as the one received by the governor. The inappropriate love letter from a fan to a celebrity is placed on the same scale as the death threat to the mayor. As you move the cursor over each cell, pop-up text appears which explains the cell in more detail, as well as the premise of the question. Once the appropriate cell is selected, a detailed cell information screen appears (see
Figure 2
). Here, you can merely confirm the cell selection, add custom text which will appear in your finished report, or access the resource material to explore the question or get an expert's opinion.

MAPP Features

One of the most impressive features included in the MAPP system is a compilation of resource material about public figure threats (see
Figure 3
). This collection covers twenty-eight topics, including extensive databases of attacks on public figures, as well as terrorist and extremist threat anniversary dates. Also included is a video library, containing twenty interviews and comments by experts in the field (see
Figure 4
). Unlike a library where you must search through shelves of books for information, MAPP's reference material is available at the touch of a button at the precise point in the process where it is needed. MAPP also contains a topic index, containing a helpful list of inquiries, an extensive help menu, and the ability to display all the questions in a list format (see
Figure 5
). There is more than 500 pages of resource material available to the user.

MAPP Finished Report

Once you have selected as many cells as possible with the information available, MAPP will automatically produce a finished report in seconds with just a push of the button (see
Figure 6
).

MOSAIC evaluates the information you enter by comparing it to the opinions of expert practitioners, relevant research, and similar cases where the outcomes are known. This internal evaluation is expressed in a rating on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being assigned to cases that have the highest number of factors experts associate with escalation (see
Figure 7
).

While the assessor must evaluate accuracy, MOSAIC measures the amount and value of information, and expresses the results by "IQ" (Information Quotient). MOSAIC assigns Completion Points to express the quality of an assessment, with a maximum of 200 points. With most MOSAIC systems, at least 125 Completion Points are needed for quality assessment. MAPP even tells you which aspects of your case need further attention. Put in simple terms, the more you know, the better -but information is not equal. Some kinds of facts are more important to an assessment than others. The fact that the governor's pursuer bought a weapon last week and visited the Capitol is more important than the pursuer's age. A Completeness Scale at the top of your template will indicate how much of the assessment has been completed. A person familiar with the case can complete a MAPP assessment in about ten minutes, and have an impressive, comprehensive report in just minutes.

MAPP Accuracy

It is important to note that any assessment is a "snapshot" in time. As situations change, so will the need to reassess the new situation. MAPP seeks to recognize risk in situations, not to identify so-called "dangerous" people. It is a system designed to enhance high-stakes assessments and to contribute to people's welfare and safety. MAPP does not and cannot replace the user's skill, intuition, or decision-making responsibility. It is diagnostic only, and does not suggest or prescribe any case-management plans. While MAPP doesn't make predictions, it can and does substantially improve the predictions that you must occasionally make. It does so by recognizing expert opinion, relevant research, and case histories. Only through the measurement of the potential threat to and vulnerability of a public figure, can you most effectively stop targeted violence before it puts the public figure in immediate risk.