Story by Pamela Sleezer, Joint Base Lewis-McChord Public Affairs Office.
Joint Base Lewis-McChord is one of 17 installations selected by the Department of Defense to herald in a new program intended to address and prevent workplace violence within the military community.
Following the tragic active-shooter event that unfolded in 2009 at Fort Cavazos, Texas — then known as Fort Hood — and other similar events that have followed since, the Defense Department last year unveiled its new Prevention Assistance and Response program that falls under the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency headquartered in Quantico.
Simply put, the PAR program works with existing units at select installations to assist commanders in preventing workplace violence and other types of insider threat concerns.
Craig Colean is the PAR coordinator for JBLM, and he said his office will work closely with the commanders at I Corps, 62nd Airlift Wing and other tenant units across the base to serve as an additional element to a united team effort that will work to identify risk markers and respond to threat concerns.
“We will all be working with the units as a team to accomplish this,” Colean said.
Dave Paravecchia, chief of the DOD PAR division, said PAR professionals at each installation will be working closely with prevention and human resources experts to ensure military and civilian leaders are aware of various services, such as financial planning, marriage counseling, and other employee assistance programs. These programs address some of the issues that, if left unaddressed, might lead some employees to act out with violence, he said.
The addition of the PAR program will not change the process to reporting a perceived threat, Colean said, but will add additional resources to responding to those reports.
“You know, there are so many great ways that a person can report a concern, and that won’t change,” he said. “But with the addition of PAR, we will work alongside the Directorate of Emergency Services and law enforcement at JBLM to enhance the abilities of detection and response across the installation. We’re just joining the team.”
The professionals who make up the PAR program have been hired from within the federal government both inside and outside the DOD, state law enforcement and the private sector. In fact, Colean said a lot of the professionals at JBLM are veterans who served in the counterintelligence communities.
“The individuals at PAR have a lot of experience behind their work,” Colean said.
With the launch of the program this year, PAR professionals recently completed training at Quantico, Virginia, for their new roles. There, they learned about various prevention, assistance and response programs and about partner requirements so they can be better equipped to work collaboratively at the installation level.
Paravecchia said the training included learning about various prevention, assistance and response programs, and about partner requirements that will allow them to integrate seamlessly into the installation level.
“Specific to workplace violence, the PAR cadre are trained on indicators of violent behaviors, friction points in an individual’s life which may be influencing their behaviors and actions, data aggregation, threat and risk assessment, subject professional judgement tools, coping mechanisms, available services and other mitigation measures that can be implemented by military and civilian leaders to help move someone off the path of violence,” Paravecchia said.
The PAR program is relatively new, and Paravecchia said it will go through a yearlong assessment as it moves through the three phases of initial operating capability, implementing the tasks associated with each phase until it meets full operational capability in the first quarter of Fiscal 2025.
EDITOR’S NOTE: C. Todd Lopez, DOD News, contributed to this story.
