[Gary Cohn is an investment banker. He is the chief economic advisor to President Donald Trump and Director of the United States National Economic Council. He was formerly the president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs.]
Risk Assessment
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We have a problem in applying Colorado's Civil Commitment law, and we would argue that there are numerous reasons for that. But it is pretty hard to argue that we don't have a problem/s.
Other States have similar problems. One of the things that we suggested 2 years ago after the Holmes case was uniform evidence-based risk assessments. But that didn't happen, because there really wasn't anything available to utilize. Since that time, John D. Milby with the Naval Post Graduate School, Homeland Security Center, did his Thesis "Preempting Mass Murder: Improving Law Enforcement Risk Assessments of Persons with Mental Illness" March 2015. From the Abstract of the Thesis: "Across the United States, mass murder events have been on the rise for nearly a decade. This thesis found that persons with serious mental illness perpetrated a statistically significant number of these events. Currently, law enforcement agencies are often the first--and in many communities the only resource--available to assist and assess mentally ill persons in crisis. This thesis investigated the current state of law enforcement training as it relates to assessing dangerousness and the risk for violence among persons with serious mental illness. It found that there is very little training and no risk assessment tool or guide currently available to assist law enforcement officers tasked with assessing mentally ill persons for dangerousness. Subsequently, this thesis examined alternative methods and models for assessing risk, including clinical violence risk assessments, and it conducted summary case studies. These included cases in which mentally ill persons committed acts of mass murder and cases where law enforcement successfully intervened and prevented mentally ill persons from carrying out planned violence. As a result of this research and analysis, a field risk assessment guide has been developed and recommended for adoption to aid law enforcement officers in assessing the dangerousness of mentally ill persons." https://www.hsdl.org/?abstract&did=765308 |
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When some of these horrible tragedies happen:
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