What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

It was a privilege to lead the TAPS Act press conference today with @RepKatieHill, @RepDanCrenshaw, @RepSpanberger and @USRepGaryPalmer. This bipartisan and bicameral solution can be implemented NOW to prevent targeted violence and save lives. Thx @houstonpolice for attending! pic.twitter.com/AZ2q8RPJP1 — Brian Babin (@RepBrianBabin) May 15, 2019

Congresspeople from three different states gathered together to give a press conference last Wednesday. They gathered to announce a bipartisan effort to make threat assessment training used to protect those in government and entertainment available to state and local law enforcement, called TAPS. Ostensibly, this is to enable them to better assess a threat and deal with it decisively. The stated goal was to prevent violent acts, such as the mass shooting in Virginia Beach, from happening in the first place by “assessing” a person or group for markers indicating they are capable of violence.

You know all those slippery slopes you hear tell about?

Congresswoman Katie Hill, D- Agua Dulce, was joined by Brian Babin, R-Woodville of California; Dan Crenshaw, R-Houston of Texas; Abigail Spanberger, D-Glen Allen of Virginia; and Gary Palmer, R-Hoover of Alabama, and announced support for Babin’s bill, the Threat Assessment, Prevention and Safety (TAPS) Act (H.R. 838). This bill promises training in the prevention of “targeted” violence.

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Everyone is capable of violence, for one thing. There are times when people suffer something that causes them to feel or think something violent, and they often express it externally. Does that make them someone to be surveilled? When does the threat assessment program become a violation of the Constitution? This bill raises a whole bunch of questions for people looking into it.

Lots of Questions About Threat Assessment

Particularly this: who gets to decide what the markers for potential violence are? And will this be limited to those who have been arrested and put in jail, or does it extend to the general public? Here’s an excerpt from page three of the bill. “BEHAVIORAL THREAT ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT. The term ‘behavioral threat assessment and management’ means the systematic and evidence-based process of:

(A) identifying individuals who are exhibiting patterns of concerning behavior that indicate an interest, motive, intention, or capability of carrying out an act of violence; (B) investigating and gathering information from multiple sources to assess whether an individual described in subparagraph (A) poses a threat, based on articulable facts; and (C) the subsequent management of such a threat, if necessary.”

The bill is an easy read, only about 24 pages, and mostly outlines how this new strategy is implemented and who would implement it. One of the things it doesn’t define is “patterns of concerning behavior.” We don’t know from day to day what the government considers to be concerning behavior. We also do not know why such behaviors would indicate to the authorities that a person has “an interest, motive, intention, or capability of carrying out an act of violence.”

Potentially Unconstitutional

Here is another thing to consider. If someone happened to be behaving with such patterns, but did not commit a crime, why is it ok to investigate and/or gather information from ANY source? This seems a direct violation of the amendment guaranteeing the right to privacy. The fourth amendment states emphatically that unreasonable searches and seizures are a violation of that right.

Amendment IV. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

It may just be me, but it sounds like this bill will enable authorities to “investigate” thought crimes. You know all those slippery slopes you hear tell about? This is one of those. We need to make sure we are not becoming Great Britain, who now jails people for tweets endorsing things they disagree with, and daring to “misgender” others. That is a bad place to be.