Five years ago in the eastern German town of Erfurt, 19-year-old Robert Steinhäuser went on a shooting rampage, killing 12 teachers, two students, a secretary and a policeman before turning the weapon on himself. The event sent shock waves through the country and sparked widespread soul-searching on topics from teenage alienation and violent video games through mass media and gun control. Just last year, another school shooting took place in Emsdetten in northern Germany, leaving 37 injured and the 18 year old gunman dead.
Jens Hoffmann is a psychologist whose project at the Technical University of Darmstadt – ironically, the German sister school of Virginia Tech University, which saw its own horrific killing spree on April 16. Hoffmann helped develop an early detection method to identify those at risk for mass violence, which he teaches to law enforcement agencies, schools and businesses.
Dr. Hoffmann, what does your project and method do?
After the school shooting in Erfurt in 2002, we began to wonder if anything could be done about it. We found that in the United States there was already quite a lot of research on early warning signals about these attackers. So we analyzed German cases and we found just about the same signals. They were almost identical.
After that, we developed instruments to analyze the communication of people who are estranged, and their other behaviors, and the best way to intervene.
Now we mostly offer two-day workshops for school psychologists, policemen, and people working in schools and companies. We teach them how to make risk assessments in their own organizations.
Briefly, what do you tell people to look out for?
First, something must have gone wrong for the attacker. He has a problem and he can't get over it. And he is very angry. They are always very depressive and very angry.
