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Although there is no reliable and accurate prospective profile and violence cannot be predicted, warning signs may precede violent or threatening behaviors. Based on the extensive body of threat assessment and management research, warning behaviors and other pre-attack behaviors include but are not limited to the following and should be reported to the Office of Threat Assessment or University Police:
- Making direct or veiled threats of violence
- Having hostile and sustained grievances
- Increasingly erratic, desperate, or aggressive behaviors
- Identifying with violent individuals, ideologies, or events
- Preparatory actions for a violent act including research, planning, and/or acquiring and practicing with weapons
- Communications to third parties about a desire or intention to be violent
- Statements that violence is justified because of one's grievance
- Repeated non-compliance with restrictions, boundaries, trespass warnings, protection orders, or laws
- Increased preoccupation with a person or a cause
- Persistent unwanted romantic pursuit
- Recent or impending losses including but not limited to employment, academic, relationship, health, financial, or status in conjunction with denial and/or negative coping mechanisms
- A criminal or personal history suggestive of a propensity to use violence to project power and to control others
- Statements about desires to die, to kill oneself, or to be killed