The sovereign citizen movement is one of the largest antigovernment nationalism or domestic terrorist collectives in the United States. In the last decade, over a dozen public officials were injured or killed by individuals adhering to sovereign citizen ideology. The Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP-18;Meloy & Gill, 2016;Meloy, Habermeyer, & Guldimann, 2015) is a collection of 18 behavior-based warning signs for terror incidents which has been used to assess primarily international terrorism samples. In this study, the researchers applied the TRAP-18 to both violent and nonviolent incidents involving sovereign citizen members. Using chi-square tests for independence and a logistic regression analysis, the researchers found support for the TRAP-18. The sum of the TRAP-18 scores was able to postdict violent outcomes within the events included within the study. This important finding should guide future research on the use of the TRAP-18 involving sovereign citizens' collectives and other domestic groups who exhibit violence.
Public Significance StatementThe present study finds the Terrorist Radicalization Assessment Protocol (TRAP-18) tool was useful in differentiating violent domestic terrorism incidents from those that did not escalate to violence. It advances the concept that appropriately trained professionals may be able to identify warning behaviors in order to predict and prevent violent incidents.
Since the legalization of recreational marijuana occurred in Colorado, politicians, academics, and the public have been paying close attention to what impact, if any, the legalization of recreational marijuana has on crime, substance use and abuse, and state revenue gains. However, research has not identified the potential impact that marijuana legalization has had on law enforcement officers in neighboring states. This study used survey methodology to explore how the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado has affected law enforcement officers and their duties in states that border Colorado. Using multistage cluster sampling, municipal police departments and sheriff's offices in Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming were selected for inclusion in this study based off their proximity to Colorado and because none had legalized either medical or recreational marijuana at the time of this study. Results indicate that law enforcement officers view Colorado's legalization of recreational marijuana as having a negative impact on their enforcement duties. Respondents note an increase in potency, perceived juvenile use, and strain on their resources as major issues they are now having to deal with. Analysis indicates that departments further away from Colorado perceive less of an impact than
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