Behavioural Threat Assessment and Management

Dates: 11 & 12 November 2026

Venue: Investec Bank Head Office, Sandton

Presenter: Andre Simons

Day 1: Concerning and Threatening Communications:

Threatening and concerning communications often arrive with urgency, ambiguity, and high stakes. This session will give new and experienced threat professionals a practical framework for moving from initial triage to full assessment, with emphasis on evaluating intent, imminence, capability, leakage, escalation, and progression on the pathway to violence. Attendees will examine how language, context, and behavioural indicators can be integrated into defensible assessments that support timely, proportionate, and actionable threat management decisions.

Day 2: Autogenic Offenders:
Some offenders do not fit neatly into familiar grievance-based, intimate-partner, or ideologically driven categories, yet they may still present significant risk. This session will explore autogenic offenders, including nihilistic violent extremists and individuals whose violence appears self-generated, idiosyncratic, or difficult to classify through traditional motivational lenses. Through case reviews, including the Las Vegas Route 91 Harvest Festival shooter, attendees will consider how atypical pathways, ambiguous motives, and nontraditional warning behaviours can inform assessment, prevention, and threat management practice.

Speaker Bio: Andre Simons, MA, CTM,  is the Lead for Violence Risk and Legal Response for OpenAI. 

With a 23-year career in law enforcement and public service, Andre served as a certified FBI Profiler and as the Unit Chief of the FBI’s Behavioral Threat Assessment Center at the Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) in Quantico, Virginia, before retiring in 2019.

Andre has co-authored numerous works on targeted violence including A Study of the Pre-Attack Behaviors of Active Shooters in the U.S. (2018), The Assessment of Anonymous Threatening Communications (2021), and Publicly Humiliating Events: A Precursor to Workplace Violence? (2024). He is the 2019 recipient of the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Association of Threat Assessment Professionals (ATAP) and is the National Chair of ATAP’s Certified Threat Manager Program.

In private practice, Andre has previously worked as a Principal with Control Risks Group and a Partner at VanSlyke Schouten LLP in Washington, DC. In these roles, he has advised organizations on crisis response, threat assessment, and the design and implementation of workplace violence prevention programs.

HPCSA CPD Points applied for: 16 CEUs

Costs:

AfATAP and other TAP members: ZAR6500.00

Non members: ZAR: 7000.00