BCA program to identify danger signs before shootings faces federal cuts
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As Minnesota legislators and others debate policies in response to the mass shooting last month at Annunciation Church and School in Minneapolis that killed two children and wounded 21 other people, an approach to try to prevent violent shootings is under threat from Trump administration funding cuts.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension program is called the Behavioral Threat Assessment Management team (BTAM). Its job is to set up systems to investigate threats that could lead to violence. The team brings together law enforcement with school administrators, faith leaders and others to intervene before someone turns to a violent act. The BTAM model is at the core of the state’s violence prevention efforts.
The program was at least partially defunded after the federal government in July retroactively canceled $18.5 million in violence prevention grants through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. A release from the agency called the spending “wasteful,” “ideologically-driven” and said it doesn’t meet the agency’s Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships goal “to prevent terrorism or targeted violence.”
The administration has also canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in other violence prevention funding around the country, including a $2 million grant to the Minnesota Department of Education on “preventing school violence,” according to an analysis by the Council on Crime and Justice.
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Democratic U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith both condemned the cuts. In a statement to MPR News, Klobuchar said the Department of Homeland Security should reverse the decision to cancel the funding, which she said “supports agents working to prevent and respond to targeted acts of violence and terrorism threats.”
“After the horrific acts of violence in our state this year, we must provide our law enforcement officers with the resources they need to keep Minnesotans safe,” Klobuchar said.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The BTAM team is a recent development in a state that’s experienced a number of high-profile acts of violence, including the 2005 school shooting on Red Lake Nation, the 2012 shooting at Accent Signage Systems and more recent attacks like the assassination of state House leader Melissa Hortman and the shooting at Annunciation.
The BCA was awarded a grant of $700,659 from the federal agency’s targeted violence and terrorism prevention program in 2023 to build a threat assessment team that would focus on “persons of concern, potential active shooters, school shootings/threats, stalking and workplace violence.”
In March, Gov. Tim Walz announced the launch of a statewide targeted violence prevention strategy, which included the BTAM team. Walz said at the time that “we are doubling down on our work to combat targeted violence across the state and prevent it from occurring in the first place.”
In April, Public Safety Commissioner Bob Jacobson warned members of the state Senate Finance Committee that the teams “who disrupt mass violence attacks” would be under threat by federal cuts.
BCA spokesperson Jill Oliveira said in an email response to questions that the BTAM is still in operation as they figure out how much the federal cuts will affect the project.
“We’ve had to make some temporary adjustments, including canceling a statewide training, to maintain operations in this time of heightened concern about threats. But the extent of the impact remains to be seen,” Oliveira said in an email. “The BTAM program is not sustainable in the current funding situation.”
The team currently includes two special agents and one part-time analyst. Since it started, Oliveira said they’ve trained more than 750 people in how to assess mass violence threats and prevent violence, including representatives from law enforcement, faith-based institutions, mental health providers and schools.
A May profile on the state Department of Public Safety’s website described the team as a “significant step” in making sure that school shootings do not happen again in the state. The piece quoted Assistant Special Agent in Charge Stefanie Dressen, who said the team’s work was about recognizing warning signs and offering a different path: “We’re not just trying to stop violence; we’re trying to prevent it by intervening before the choice is made."
Last month, before the Annunciation shooting and after a gunman posing as a police officer killed Hortman and her husband Mark and wounded state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife Yvette in their homes, six Democratic members of Congress from Minnesota asked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to reinstate the grant to the BCA, warning that “the grant’s abrupt cancellation is irresponsible and leaves our constituents and communities more vulnerable to violent attacks.”
Gov. Walz has made gun reforms a priority following the Annunciation shooting and vowed to call lawmakers for a special session on firearms. But he and his caucus have struggled to attract Republican votes for his policies. During a recent working group session, Republicans said the state needs to focus on mental health access among other measures. Walz has said he’ll call a special session even if legislative leaders can’t come to an agreement on the session’s terms.
Officials with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension declined to interview for this story.
