MOSAIC Threat Assessment Systems

MOSAIC Threat Assessment Systems

MOSAIC Threat Assessment Systems (MOSAIC) is a method developed by Gavin de Becker & Associates in the early 1980s to assess and screen threats and inappropriate communications.

Walt Risler of Indiana University assisted in the development of the method. Robert Martin, the founding commander of the Los Angeles Police Department Threat Management Unit, now a Managing Principal with Gavin de Becker & Associates, heads up the MOSAIC Threat Assessment Unit.

Early MOSAIC systems were developed more than twenty-five years ago. According to the developer, the computer-assisted MOSAIC method is used by the Supreme Court Police to assess threats to the Justices, by the U.S. Capitol Police for threats against Members of Congress, by police agencies protecting the governors of eleven states, by many large corporations, and by more than twenty top universities, although no documentation of this is provided on the developer's website or in materials that are based on information from sources other than the developer.

There are different MOSAIC systems for different situations, including:

• Threats and fear in the workplace
• Threats by students
• Threats against judges and other judicial officials
• Threats against public figures and public officials
• Domestic abuse situations

MOSAIC poses a series of questions to users, accompanied by a range of possible answers. With each question suggested by MOSAIC, the system provides a button for Premise of the Question – providing research citations about why that particular area of inquiry is part of the assessment process. MOSAIC calculates the value of the answers selected by the assessor using an unknown algorithm, and expresses the results on a scale of 1 to 10. Like many other assessment tools, MOSAIC automatically produces a full written report, describing the factors that were considered.

MOSAIC’s on-line resources include a library of research, publications, and training videos that users can access.