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Police Dept. to Use Internet to Try to Stop Mass Shootings

By MICHAEL WILSON
Published: December 20, 2012 

Top intelligence officials in the New York Police Department met on Thursday to examine ways to search the Internet to identify potential “deranged” gunmen before they strike, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said.  

“The techniques would include cyber-searches of language that mass-casualty shooters have used in e-mails and Internet postings,” Mr. Kelly said in a statement. “The goal would be to identify the shooter in cyberspace, engage him there and intervene, possibly using an undercover to get close, and take him into custody or otherwise disrupt his plans.” 

The meeting came almost a week after a gunman killed 26 people, 20 of them children, inside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. 

There are plans to send officers to Newtown and to scenes of other mass shootings to collect information, Paul. J. Browne, the department’s chief spokesman, said.

Mr. Browne said the potential tactics included creating an algorithm that would search online “for terms used by active shooters in the past that may be an indicator of future intentions.”

Mr. Kelly said the technique was similar to those being used to spot terrorists’ chatter online. The new searches would target “apolitical or deranged killers before they become active shooters,” he said. 

The meeting’s participants included David Cohen, who leads the department’s intelligence division, and senior members of the department.

“Active shooters can cause multiple deaths in seconds, regardless of police training or how deft the police response,” Mr. Kelly said. “For that reason, the N.Y.P.D. is examining ways, through intelligence, to try to identify potential active shooters before they strike.”