JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO, Texas –
The Department of Defense announced the establishment of new Prevention, Assistance and Response, or PAR, positions at 17 military installations, including Joint Base San Antonio.
Todd Carrender, PAR office chief, arrived at JBSA in June 2023 to lead the PAR program for both JBSA and Fort Cavazos.
The PAR program will assist base commanders and leaders in early detection, assessment and mitigation of insider threat indicators and personnel at risk of potentially violent behaviors.
“Myself and two PAR Coordinators, Hector Lopez at JBSA-Fort Sam Houston and Keith Carter at JBSA-Randolph, have been meeting and collaborating with functional experts and leaders throughout the joint base since our arrival,” Carrender said. “PAR is a unique effort that combines disparate elements available at Joint Base San Antonio and we’re engaged to coordinate those capabilities and resources to forge an accurate threat assessment for the commander.”
PAR overlaps missions and functions such as workplace violence, countering insider threats, antiterrorism, force protection, mission assurance and operational security.
Carrender and the PAR team are working with joint base functional experts from chaplains and suicide prevention program managers to command climate specialists such as law enforcement, counterintelligence and security officers to help ensure effective insider threat mitigation with a coordinated and consolidated approach to security policies and reporting capabilities.
Carrender, Lopez and Carter are among 25 PAR coordinators who completed PAR baseline training at the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, or DCSA, that extensively covered behavioral health topics to help them identify, and work to mitigate, potential workplace violence indicators.
The following PAR Program lines of effort are available at JBSA:
- Provide joint base commanders and civilian equivalent leaders with an understanding of overall risk within their organizations and options to care for their personnel.
- Collaborate with trained professionals, integrated prevention experts, and key stakeholders to develop tailored insider threat mitigation strategies.
- Address inside threat indicators and elements of workplace violence and violent behavior at its earliest instance.
- Support employees who are victims of or impacted by violence.
Developed following the Fort Hood mass shooting in 2009, the PAR program was formed as a decentralized cadre of functional experts who assist military installation leadership – joint, Air Force, Army, Navy and Marine Corps bases.
In June 2022 – to further PAR capabilities across DOD – DCSA was given the mission to establish a centralized PAR capability that standardizes the implementation of insider threat program requirements while reducing DOD component concerns about organizational responsibilities and resourcing requirements.
One of the key tenets to the successful evaluation and management of insider risk is a “boots on the ground” approach to providing support. This is one of the centralized capabilities that DITMAC oversees through decentralized implementation.
As part of DITMAC’s decentralized implementation, PAR cadre employed across bases and installations nationwide were trained in various structured judgment tools and indicators of potential workplace violence to help understand the seriousness of the risk presented.
Moreover, PAR cadre are working directly with DOD Insider Threat Management and Analysis Center, or DITMAC, subject matter experts to identify, assess and mitigate the potential insider threats in their designated regions.