Violence Is an Evolutionary Process, and Institutions Keep Pretending It Is Not

Last week, Canadians watched another act of mass violence unfold and then watched the predictable second act: politicians and media outlets rushing to exploit it. I am not writing this to litigate firearms policy. One sentence covers what needs to be said: politicians are exploiting a mass casualty event to revive and expand arguments they were already making.

The more important issue is the one that actually changes outcomes. Violence Threat Risk Assessment, the VTRA model, and the institutional habits that prevent it from being executed properly.

Kevin Cameron is one of the most influential figures in Canada’s school-based threat assessment space. He is widely associated with the Violence Threat Risk Assessment model, VTRA, and he has spent years training school boards and partner agencies on how to recognize and manage the pathway to targeted violence. I can speak to this personally. In 2008, while I was posted to Niagara Region, I completed Cameron’s VTRA Level 1 and Level 2 training with the Niagara Region District School Board because we were running a military high school co-op program. That experience shaped how I look at these incidents to this day.

VTRA is not about prediction, and it is not a bureaucratic checklist. It is a practical, multidisciplinary process built on one core truth Cameron repeats in training:

Violence is an evolutionary process, no one just snaps.

Most public discussion of violence is built on the “snapped” myth because it is comforting. If the attacker “snapped,” then the event was unforeseeable and nobody failed. The problem with that story is simple. It is rarely true. In most cases, the final act is the visible end of an invisible process.

VTRA exists because violence usually leaves a trail.

THE CASE FROM LAST WEEK: REPORTED INDICATORS OF A PATHWAY

When you look at what has been reported so far about last week’s Tumbler Ridge attack, you can already see why the “no warning signs” script is so often misleading.

Police and major outlets have reported prior police interactions involving the suspect tied to mental health concerns, including instances where the suspect was apprehended under British Columbia’s Mental Health Act. Reporting also describes police having attended the home previously and having seized firearms at least once in the past, with some firearms later returned after a lawful owner petitioned for their return. Authorities also reported the suspect’s firearms licence had expired in 2024 and that there were no firearms registered in the suspect’s name. Motive remains under investigation, and I am not going to speculate beyond what has been publicly reported. The point is narrower: elements that threat assessment practitioners treat as serious risk context were reportedly present in the background. Those elements include repeated mental health related police contact and past firearms seizure and return. These are not “motive,” but they are relevant indicators that something existed for systems to manage, document, and monitor.

This is where VTRA matters. VTRA does not promise omniscience. VTRA forces disciplined action when indicators accumulate and when systems would otherwise default to minimization, siloing, and delay.

WHAT VTRA ACTUALLY IS

VTRA is not mind reading and VTRA is not a guarantee. VTRA is a structured, multidisciplinary process to identify and manage risk based on observable behaviours and credible information. It forces schools, police, families, and community partners to combine what each one knows into a single picture, then act on it.

Think of VTRA as a process that answers three questions:

1. Is this person on a pathway to violence?

2. If yes, how far along that pathway are they?

3. What actions will interrupt the pathway and reduce risk today, tomorrow, and over the next months?

Institutions fail when they do the opposite. They treat incidents as isolated. They keep information in silos. They avoid documentation. They delay action until the person becomes operational. VTRA was built to stop those failures.

“VIOLENCE IS EVOLUTIONARY” IN PLAIN ENGLISH

A simple way to explain Cameron’s line to the layperson is to describe the stages that commonly show up across targeted violence cases. The labels differ across models, but the progression is consistent.

1. A grievance forms
   Something happens and the person experiences it as humiliation, rejection, betrayal, or injustice. The event itself may look minor to others. The subjective meaning becomes fuel. The key distinction is whether the person can process it and move forward, or whether the grievance hardens into a fixed narrative.

2. Rumination and fixation take over
   The person replays the grievance and builds a story around it. The story becomes identity. The story becomes destiny. They stop thinking in shades of gray. They begin thinking in absolutes. They begin thinking in “they did this to me” terms. The grievance becomes a lens that distorts everything.

3. Isolation increases
   The person disconnects from normal anchors. Sometimes people withdraw. Sometimes they get pushed out. Either way, isolation removes external reality checks that interrupt dangerous thinking. It also increases the power of the internal story.

4. Desensitization begins
   The moral brakes weaken. The idea of harming others becomes less shocking. Violent ideation starts to feel like relief, control, or revenge. This stage can show up as fascination with violence, identification with previous attackers, or language that turns humans into objects.

5. Leakage happens
   People often leak their intent or their obsession to someone else, on purpose or by accident. Leakage can be direct threats. It can also be dark jokes, posts, drawings, writings, or “I wish I could” statements. Leakage is a gift to prevention because it is observable. VTRA treats leakage as a warning behaviour that must be assessed, not dismissed.

6. Planning and capability increase
   At some point the question stops being “is this person angry” and becomes “can this person do it.” Capability includes practical access and psychological readiness. Practical access includes weapons, opportunity, transportation, and knowledge. Psychological readiness includes resolve, emotional numbness, and willingness to cross the line.

7. A trigger accelerates the timeline
   A trigger flips “someday” into “now.” Triggers can include a confrontation, a breakup, discipline, a perceived humiliation, job loss, or feeling cornered. Triggers do not create violence by themselves. Triggers accelerate what has already been building.

This framework matters because it exposes the institutional dodge embedded in most after-action narratives: “We had no warning.” In many cases, warning behaviours existed. People saw something. People heard something. The system either failed to connect the dots or failed to act when the dots were obvious.

HOW VTRA IS SUPPOSED TO BE APPLIED

If you want to understand VTRA operationally, think in terms of a workflow with mandatory decision points. Done properly, it looks like this.

Step 1: Activation
VTRA activates when someone reports a threat or when behaviours cross a threshold that requires assessment. Activation triggers are concrete: direct threats, leakage, target fixation, escalating aggression, weapon seeking or access concerns, planning behaviours, and rapid change patterns that include despair and rage.

The first institutional failure usually happens here. Staff treat the report as a discipline issue instead of a safety issue, or they handle it informally to avoid paperwork, conflict, or reputational risk.

Step 2: Immediate safety actions
Before anybody debates labels, the school and partners take immediate safety measures when credible risk is present. Increase supervision. Control access. Separate the subject from potential targets. Preserve evidence. Notify parents. Notify police when threats, weapons, or planning indicators exist. If the threat is imminent, the assessment becomes secondary to emergency response.

The second institutional failure often happens here. People postpone action because they want certainty. VTRA does not require certainty. VTRA requires prudent risk management.

Step 3: Convene the multidisciplinary team
VTRA is not a solo administrator making a judgment call. A functional team includes school administration, mental health professionals, district leadership, and police partners. Depending on the case, it can include child welfare, probation, and community mental health.

Bias thrives in solo judgment. Team decisions reduce the risk of both overreaction and underreaction.

Step 4: Define the threat question
The team documents what happened using facts. What was said or done. Who the target is. Whether the threat is vague or specific. Whether it appears transient or substantive. Whether there are time, place, or intent indicators.

This step stops the game of narrative substitution. Risk cannot be managed if behaviour is not named.

Step 5: Information gathering and collation
This step is the heart of VTRA. The team collects what each silo knows and builds one timeline. School behaviour patterns, attendance, discipline, social dynamics, digital leakage, family stressors, supervision, and access to means. Police context and mental health context are added as permitted within lawful boundaries.

VTRA exists because no single party holds the full story. A student might look fine to one adult and dangerous to another. Collation resolves that problem.

Step 6: Interviews
The team interviews the reporting party, potential targets if identifiable, relevant peers and staff, the parents or guardians, and the subject. Interviews are structured and documented. The goal is to assess intent, grievance, fixation, coping, and openness to support. The goal is also to identify protective factors and to test whether the person is moving toward action.

Step 7: Risk determination
The team reaches a documented risk determination, often using bands such as low, medium, high, or imminent. The label matters less than the consequences. Risk determination must trigger specific actions.

Step 8: Risk management plan
This is where real VTRA separates from paper policy.

A proper plan includes:
Supervision and structure at school, including monitored transitions and boundaries.
Supports and services for the subject and family, including rapid linkage to counselling or clinical care.
Means safety, including direct questions and verified controls around access to weapons.
Target protection if a target exists.
Clear conditions for continuation or return at school, with re-entry planning if removal occurs.
Assigned responsibilities, deadlines, and a follow-up schedule.

Step 9: Monitoring and reassessment
VTRA assumes risk is dynamic. Monitoring continues for weeks or months depending on risk level. New triggers reactivate assessment. Noncompliance escalates consequences. The plan is updated as conditions change.

Step 10: Documentation and closure
Every decision is recorded. If it is not written down, it did not happen. Cases close only when risk stabilizes and the team documents why, with clear reactivation triggers.

WHY VTRA BREAKS DOWN IN THE REAL WORLD

Most failures are not knowledge failures. Most failures are courage failures and process failures.

1. Institutions fear controversy more than they fear the pathway to violence
   Staff hesitate to document. Staff hesitate to escalate. Staff avoid police involvement. Staff reframe leakage as “venting” to reduce paperwork and conflict. None of that is VTRA. It is liability management.

2. Silos remain intact
   A school holds one set of facts. Police hold another. Health holds another. Families hold another. If the system cannot lawfully and practically share information at the right time, it will not see the trajectory until it is too late.

3. Means safety is treated as awkward instead of mandatory
   Serious threat assessment without means safety is performance art. Access matters. Even if someone is not a legal owner, access can exist through household storage, peers, theft, or black market channels. VTRA must treat access as a core driver of risk and manage it aggressively when risk rises.

4. Monitoring fades
   Many institutions can react for 48 hours. Few can sustain disciplined monitoring for months. Violence evolution does not care about attention spans.

HOW TO MAKE VTRA WORK IN PRACTICE

If you want to prevent repeat failures, the fixes are structural.

1. Mandatory activation triggers
   Remove discretion once defined thresholds are met. If leakage occurs, the team convenes. If credible planning indicators occur, police are involved. If access to means is a concern at elevated risk levels, means safety steps become mandatory.

2. No profiling, no exemptions
   Protected characteristics must not raise or lower thresholds. Behaviour drives action. This protects subjects from prejudice and protects the public from cowardice.

3. Standard documentation templates
   Make it easy to document quickly and consistently. Require verbatim threat language, evidence preservation checkboxes, and time-stamped notifications.

4. Team-based decision making
   Require multidisciplinary consensus for risk determination and for any decision to downgrade or delay actions.

5. Audits and after-action reviews
   Track time-to-activation, time-to-police-contact, evidence preservation compliance, and whether monitoring schedules were followed. Publish anonymized outcomes. Tie funding and leadership accountability to compliance.

POLITICIANS WILL EXPLOIT, BUT INSTITUTIONS CAN STILL EXECUTE

Politicians will always use tragedies to justify new initiatives. Public safety does not improve because a talking point won the day. Public safety improves when institutions do the unglamorous work: recognize the pathway, share information, manage access, document decisions, and sustain monitoring.

Violence is evolutionary. Institutions that refuse to treat it that way are not protecting the public. They are protecting themselves.

If your community claims it has a threat assessment protocol, ask the only questions that matter:
What triggers activation?
How fast does the team convene?
Who is on the team?
What does means safety look like in practice?
How long does monitoring last?
Where is the documentation?

Answers to those questions do more to reduce risk than any press conference that follows the next tragedy.