STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

Doug Hart cringed when he heard the president of the University of California say that active shooter incidents are impossible to predict or prevent.

Nothing could be further from the truth, said Hart, who has worked with the FBI for 23 years tackling violent incidents like murders, rapes and kidnappings and training citizen, rapid response and threat management teams.

"This is a terrible problem with awful consequences but there absolutely are preventative measures that we can and should be taking," Hart told about a hundred educators, prosecuting attorneys and law enforcement officers attending the 25th annual Idaho Prevention and Support Conference going on this week at Sun Valley Resort.

"A cardiologist can't tell you when you're going to have a heart attack, but they can look at your risk factors to develop a treatment plan," he said. "It's the same with this. We can look at risk factors and behavioral warnings for young people on what we call a pathway to violence. And we can assess the threat and figure out a plan to prevent it."

There is no profile depicting an average attacker. Although most are male, some come from good homes; others, broken homes. Some are bullied; others are the bullies.

"There's no single behavior we can pinpoint, as we can with serial killers. It's a perfect storm of risk factors and behavioral warnings come together," said Hart.

Risk factors include having poor coping skills, lacking resiliency, depression, narcissim, failed relationships

Warning behaviors include a real or perceived grievance--a significant personal loss, humiliation or setback--and a belief that there's no way to resolve it short of violence. They fantasize about getting revenge.

Other red flags include an inappropriate or sudden interest in explosives and acquisition of guns and other fire power, an escalation of target practice. The person may evidence a fascination with mass shooters and shooting incidents. They often broadcast their accumulation of weapons via social media since it's a point of pride.

And they research and plan their attacks, often testing the waters to see how they can get their weapons to the scene. often they will make a deliberate or inadvertent disclosure of violent plans on social media.

A 16-year-old Minnesota teenager who murdered his grandfather and schoolmates posted comment and made an animation of a cartoon figure shooting people and blowing up a police car.

Between 80 percent and 90 percent of the events had observable pre-attack behavior that gives everyone who comes in contact with the perpetrators a chance to raise red flags.

"This is  grassroots effort that should involve all of us in this room. We don't want people to be bystanders but upstanders."

The fact that these incidents are planned give us an opportunity to observe these behaviors" said Hart. "For all ouf faults, the FBI does analyses well. We can identify potential threats long before you see a gun and report it."

There were 160 active shooter incidents in the United States between 2000 and 2013. Forty-six percent took place in places of business; 24, percent in schools (17 percent involving kindergarten through 12th grade); 10 percent in government offices; 9 percent, open spaces; 4.4 percent in residences; 3 percent in churches and 2.4 percent in health care facilities.

What's alarming, Hart said, is that the number of incidences has grown from an average of 6.4 in the early years to 16.4 the last seven years of that study. There's been  an average of 20 every year since, or triple the number in 2000.

All but two involved a single shooter. In nine cases, the shooter first killed a family member or members before moving to a public location to continue shooting.

Fifty-six percent ended, either with the shooter turning the gun on himself after being interrupted by police or dying while fleeing police.

"In the Columbine shooting, we sent in the SWAT team so we didn't go into the school for hours. We've learned DO NOT WAIT. GO GO GO," Hart said. "The faster we get to the person the faster we stop the killings."

Once they identify a potential problem, FBI and other law enforcement can assess the threat and manage it, sometimes simply by talking to the person and helping them resolve their grievance.

"Every day I turn on my computer and see emails people have sent me about potential problems--I'd rather have that than the other way. The public wants us to arrest someone the moment a red flag is raised, but we need an arrestable offense to do that," Hart said. "Building pipe bombs is a criminal act."