In civilian law enforcement, a Threat Management Unit (TMU) is a police department team that handles cases of harassment or stalking. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) created the first Threat Management Unit, the Los Angeles Police Department Threat Management Unit, in 1990 after the murder of actress Rebecca Lucile Schaeffer. Over the years the TMU has been visited and emulated by many city, state and federal law enforcement agencies, including agencies from Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia, and South America; as well as prominent security consultants all seeking to implement a form of TMU for contracted national and foreign jurisdictions.
In April 2008, the LAPD TMU teamed up to co-deploy with the nationally recognized Los Angeles Police Department Mental Evaluation Unit (MEU) because stalking suspects often suffer from some form of mental instability, and workplace violence suspects experience some form of mental health crisis when they make threats and when they are engaging in acts of violence. The MEU, Systemwide Mental Assessment Response Team (SMART) accompanies TMU on all of its calls involving stalkers and workplace violence. Both the TMU and MEU comprise the Crisis Response Support Section (CRSS).
The primary mission of the LAPD, TMU is to ensure the safety and well being of members of the diverse communities of the City of Los Angeles by investigating and managing aggravated cases, both criminal and non-criminal, wherein individuals have demonstrated an abnormal fixation / obsession and have generated a long-term pattern of unsolicited acts of visitation, telephonic and/or written correspondence in a threatening manner toward a specific person.
The TMU is responsibilities include the following:
- Investigate aggravated criminal and at times non-criminal, cases of stalking and other threat cases on a citywide basis.
- Investigate threats directed to the City’s elected officials. As a result of this responsibility, each TMU detective has an established liaison with the staff of specific City elected officials.
- Investigate aggravated workplace violence cases involving City departments and employees.
- Staff the City’s Threat Assessment Team, which manages workplace violence cases perceived to present an immediate danger to City employees.
- Provide training and research that enables all Department employees to become better informed and prepared to handle stalking cases.
The TMU maintains liaison with:
- LAPD Division Major Assault Crimes Coordinators.
- Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office.
- United States Secret Service.
- Federal Bureau of Investigation.
- California Highway Patrol.
- Members of the entertainment industry.
Cases handled by the TMU are almost exclusively incident driven. It manages reporting of workplace violence (WPV) and threats to public officials that can often be attributed to many different variables such as environmental issues, recent political or newsworthy events, and increased awareness through training. Because stalking is a very complicated crime to investigate and manage on a long-term basis, the investigations assumed by the TMU enhances the investigation and probability of arrest of the suspect and ensures that the victim’s needs will be provided for while minimizing the City’s exposure to civil liability.
In conjunction with the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals (ATAP) the TMU plans, coordinates, staffs and co-hosts the Annual Threat Management Conference; a four-day international conference dedicated to furthering the science of threat assessment. Information on this annual event may be obtained by logging on to the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals web site.
Famous quotes containing the words los angeles, los, angeles, police, department, threat, management and/or unit:
“Just because you live in LA it doesn’t mean you have to dress that way.”
—Advertising billboard campaign in Los Angeles, mounted by New York fashion house Charivari.
“... when I finish reading People, I always feel that I have just spent four days in Los Angeles. Women’s Wear Daily at least makes me feel dirty; People makes me feel that I haven’t read or learned or seen anything at all.”
—Nora Ephron (b. 1941)
“In Washington, the first thing people tell you is what their job is. In Los Angeles you learn their star sign. In Houston you’re told how rich they are. And in New York they tell you what their rent is.”
—Simon Hoggart (b. 1946)
“Scandal begins when the police put a stop to it.”
—Karl Kraus (1874–1936)
“While the focus in the landscape of Old World cities was commonly government structures, churches, or the residences of rulers, the landscape and the skyline of American cities have boasted their hotels, department stores, office buildings, apartments, and skyscrapers. In this grandeur, Americans have expressed their Booster Pride, their hopes for visitors and new settlers, and customers, for thriving commerce and industry.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“It was common practice for me to take my children with me whenever I went shopping, out for a walk in a white neighborhood, or just felt like going about in a white world. The reason was simple enough: if a black man is alone or with other black men, he is a threat to whites. But if he is with children, then he is harmless, adorable.”
—Gerald Early (20th century)
“The management of fertility is one of the most important functions of adulthood.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“During the Suffragette revolt of 1913 I ... [urged] that what was needed was not the vote, but a constitutional amendment enacting that all representative bodies shall consist of women and men in equal numbers, whether elected or nominated or coopted or registered or picked up in the street like a coroner’s jury. In the case of elected bodies the only way of effecting this is by the Coupled Vote. The representative unit must not be a man or a woman but a man and a woman.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)