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THREE WAKE-UP CALLS, ONE ANSWER  Suicide. Domestic violence. Officer safety. Different numbers, same recurring failure.  ONE DEATH EVERY 11 MINUTES  48,824 Americans died by suicide in 2024, roughly one every 11 minutes. Since 2000, the cumulative total has surpassed 800,000, and the rate hasn’t improved over that span. It’s risen roughly 30%, from about 10.4 per 100,000 in 2000 to nearly 14 per 100,000 today, despite two decades of expanding awareness campaigns, hotlines, and mental health funding. Two decades of investing more into the status quo response-first approach, and the trend has moved the wrong direction. The data is a wake-up call; it is time to move beyond status quo strategies.  NEARLY FOUR WOMEN A DAY  Domestic violence tells a different, in some ways more alarmingRead More →

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An independent investigation reaches the same conclusion we’ve been pointing to for years.  WHAT THE INVESTIGATION FOUND  In March 2026, a man with a 2016 federal terrorism conviction attacked ROTC students at a Virginia university. Virginia’s Attorney General appointed independent counsel to investigate. Their conclusion: the university’s own threat assessment team was, in the investigators’ words, “an effective threat assessment infrastructure in place to assess risk.” The investigation further found that had the university known what was already known elsewhere, it is highly likely they would have removed him from campus before he ever attacked. Neither his federal probation officer, who had explicit authority to disclose the risk heRead More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*

Every time tragedy strikes: a shooting, act of violence, a suicide, a sex assault, a fraud case, a scandal, the aftermath sounds the same. Investigators find pre-incident warning signs that existed. Resources that could have intervened existed. And yet the tragedy still occurred.  This isn’t bad luck. It isn’t a one-off failure. It’s a pattern and a problem that has existed for decades.  I call it the Gapidemic.  What Is the Gapidemic?  The Gapidemic is the unnamed, unsolved, underlying problems that exist in nearly every organization and every community, regardless of size or sector. For decades, it was assumed training, a new policy, and meetings could fix it. They haven’t and they can’t. A different solution is needed to fix the gaps:  None of these gaps (and others) are new. What’s new is namingRead More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*, Uncategorized

Rick Shaw, CEO and Founder of Awareity, is the recipient of the Excellence in Prevention Award for his transformative contributions to proactive threat prevention and information sharing across the homeland security enterprise. Through the creation and national deployment of the Awareity Platform, Rick has built one of the most effective pre-incident prevention systems in the country—empowering schools, government agencies, and private organizations to identify and act on early warning signs before tragedy strikes. For more than a decade, Rick has championed the need to close what he calls the “80% Gap”—the critical disconnect where warning signs exist but are not acted upon. His work has provided organizations withRead More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*

Why are thousands of preventable tragedies not prevented? Proactive pre-incident prevention actions were not taken by community resources. Why were pre-incident actions not taken? The bigger picture of warning signs and concerning behaviors exhibited by at-risk / evildoers were not seen by the right community resources/team members. Why were exhibited behaviors not seen by existing team of community resources? Every day we see incidents in news headlines (thousands every year) that expose recurring failures of the deeply flawed conventional Information Sharing model. What are the recurring failures? We hear and see excuses that pre-incident warning signs were missed, concerning behaviors were ignored, and failed toRead More →

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When tragedy strikes – a school shooting, a mass attack, or another act of evil – we always hear the same painful questions: How could this have been prevented? Why didn’t someone say something? Why weren’t the warning signs connected? The truth is, in nearly every case, the signs were there. Red flags were noticed. Concerning behaviors were seen. Family, friends, teachers, neighbors, law enforcement, mental health professionals, people on social media, and others observed/had pieces of the puzzle. But the pieces never reached the right hands in time. The “Forever Problems” We call this the forever problems: hundreds of people may see something, andRead More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*

How did we get here? Where do we go from here? More status quo? How many more preventable shootings/killings by known evildoers will we allow? How many more preventable acts of violence, suicides, overdoses, and other tragedies will we allow? Back in 2011 I wrote a blog and asked why so many tragedies (failed preventions) were missed opportunities because red flags and warning signs existed and resources existed. In 2019 I authored and released my book called “The First Preventers Playbook: How to Intervene, Disrupt, and Prevent Tragedy Before it Strikes” using 20+ years of research on thousands of failed preventions. My research and bookRead More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*

Incidents are increasing in numbers and “costs” (lives, futures, reputations, response, recovery, lawsuits, insurance, etc.) and most have the SAME RECURRING PROBLEMS. Facts reveal most incidents had pre-incident indicators, had numerous sources of information and had numerous resources who could have taken pre-incident prevention actions if they had been equipped to see the historical and the escalating pre-incident indicators that were scattered across silos.     Facts reveal most organizations implemented security solutions, access controls, incident reporting, law enforcement, threat assessment teams, and had other resources, but were NOT equipped to address the silos, blind spots, and many other recurring problems.   Recurring problems ARERead More →

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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*, Uncategorized

Incidents are increasing in numbers and “costs” (lives, futures, reputations, response, recovery, lawsuits, insurance, etc.) and most have the SAME RECURRING PROBLEMS. Facts reveal most incidents had pre-incident indicators, had numerous sources of information and had numerous resources who could have taken pre-incident prevention actions if they had been equipped to see the historical and the escalating pre-incident indicators that were scattered across silos.     Facts reveal most organizations implemented security solutions, access controls, incident reporting, law enforcement, threat assessment teams, and had other resources, but were NOT equipped to address the silos, blind spots, and many other recurring problems.   Recurring problems ARERead More →

By:
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In: *Connecting the Dots Blog*

Incidents are increasing in numbers and “costs” (lives, futures, reputations, response, recovery, lawsuits, insurance, etc.) and most have the SAME RECURRING PROBLEMS. Facts reveal most incidents had pre-incident indicators, had numerous sources of information and had numerous resources who could have taken pre-incident prevention actions if they had been equipped to see the historical and the escalating pre-incident indicators that were scattered across silos.     Facts reveal most organizations implemented security solutions, access controls, incident reporting, law enforcement, threat assessment teams, and had other resources, but were NOT equipped to address the silos, blind spots, and many other recurring problems.   Recurring problems ARERead More →