For Gregory Moffatt, counseling and crime solving go hand in hand.

Moffatt, a licensed professional counselor (LPC), runs a private practice in which he specializes in working with children who have experienced physical or sexual abuse. He is also a professor of counseling at Point University in West Point, Georgia.

The other half of his career, however, is a little more unconventional. He’s a risk assessment and psychological consultant for businesses, schools and law enforcement agencies. Moffatt has done everything from assisting with hostage situations and unsolved cold case investigations to teaching at the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia. In addition to providing training and consultation, he evaluates police officers who have been involved in a duty-related shooting to determine if they’re ready to return to active work on the force.

He’s also filming on-camera commentary as a psychological consultant for a new cable television show on hostage situations. The program, titled “Deadly Demands,” premiers March 21 on Investigation Discovery, a network of the Discovery Channel.

After years of working with corporations and law enforcement agencies, Moffatt is often the person they call to evaluate unusual situations, such as when an employee is making co-workers uneasy or

a case arises that doesn’t fit the norm. It’s not a niche that he initially set out to carve for himself, but rather one that he entered “through the back door,” he says.

When Moffatt first started teaching at Point University more than three decades ago, he was the only professional counselor on campus. One day, the university’s administration approached him and asked for his help with a situation involving a student who was stalking another student.

“Stalking laws weren’t in place. Back then, even the term [stalking] wasn’t an everyday term,” says Moffatt, an American Counseling Association member. “Back then, hardly anyone did work in violence risk assessment.”

As he got involved in the case, Moffatt started researching risk assessment methods, which grew into a personal area of interest. He eventually established his own consulting business, through which he provides workplace violence assessment and training. The FBI contacted him to provide training at its academy in Quantico after he published an article in an academic journal on violence risk and assessment.

Law enforcement agencies are good at lots of things, but threat assessment isn’t always one of them, Moffatt says. That’s where his skills as a professional counselor can help fill in the “why” of a situation, he says.

Moffatt uses his counselor training to look at a specific situation’s “collection of evidence,” he says. For instance, how does the person tell his or her story? What indicators can be found in the language the person uses? What does his or her past behavior indicate? What coping skills does the person have?

“My job is to tell them [a company or law enforcement], ‘This is what I think; this is what you’re looking for,’” Moffatt says. “The question for us, in mental health, when someone’s sitting in our office is, ‘Is this person a risk?’ Sometimes the answer is yes. … How many coping skills does he [the client] have in his toolbox? If it’s a pretty empty toolbox, then I’m worried.”

For example, Moffatt was contacted by local law enforcement to evaluate the threat level of some letters a judge was receiving in the mail. Officials suspected the letters were being written by a man who had come through the judge’s courtroom for a minor infraction, he says.

Moffatt looked at the man’s behavior history (he had brandished a firearm in the past but never fired at anyone) and the language used in the letters. His counselor training helped him pick up clues — for example, symptoms of delusion and other things that would make a person unpredictable — to determine that the man was a “big talker,” but that the letters were most likely a way of “puffing out his chest” rather than an actual threat.

“I thought there was a very low possibility that he would shoot this judge. Years later, nothing has come of it,” Moffatt says.

Today, he works regularly with the Atlanta Police Department’s cold case squad and writes a regular column on children’s and family issues for The Citizen, a newspaper distributed in Fayette County, Georgia.

Moffatt says he is drawn to the sometimes gritty specialty of crime and violence assessment because he likes being part of the solution and helping to bring some closure to the victims of crimes.

“The world is not made up [solely] of bad guys and good guys,” he says. “If you go to any prison in the country, you will find a small percentage [of the inmates who] are horrible and need to stay locked up for the rest of their lives. The rest are human beings who have made a mistake. The hardest part about our job [as counselors] is to have compassion. We can take people, in any condition, and help them become more functional.”

 

Q+A: Gregory Moffatt

 

You encourage all counselors to learn more about risk assessment, whether through reading, professional development, trainings, etc. Why do you feel this particular topic is important for counselors to know?

Risk assessment is necessary in any clinical context. Violence happens in homes, schools, workplaces, on the bus, on the street and in the synagogue/cathedral. Assessing for violent behavior against others is just as important as assessing for suicide risk, [which is] something we do regularly. You don’t have to specialize in workplace violence or school violence for this to be part of your assessment toolbox.

 

Do law enforcement professionals often think of or turn to psychologists first when looking for help with mental health expertise? From your perspective, what can a professional counselor offer in this area that is different than other helping professions?

Actually, I don’t think most law enforcement people know the difference. Even when they do, they often have limited or no budgets for outside consultation. Professional counselors are cheaper than psychologists, typically. Counselors are just as competent to offer fitness for duty interventions/assessments, post-shooting intervention, violence intervention/anger management and other common needs in law enforcement as any psychologist — assuming, as always, that one is trained to deal with that population. This training is readily available to LPCs.

 

What suggestions would you give to counselors looking to help or make a connection with their local law enforcement or violence prevention agencies?

Law enforcement agencies are notoriously fraternal, and even agency to agency there is little cooperation. A given agency believes it is better than any other agency, and going outside law enforcement is seen as a negative. However, developing relationships and bringing skills to the table — especially if it is cost-effective — is the way in the door over time.

 

What are some of the main takeaways that you’ve gleaned from your work with law enforcement and risk assessment that you want professional counselors to know?

Behavioral/mental health issues are present in all corners of life. Finding a way to apply your interests in mental health in specific climates — e.g., schools, law enforcement, court — is what makes one’s career fascinating and rewarding. I look back on 30 years of work — opening doors, looking for opportunities and taking those opportunities — and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve helped hundreds of children, written hundreds of articles and numerous books, spoken to thousands of audiences and helped put many bad guys in jail — hence, making the world safer and people happier. Who could ask for more?

 

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Read more about Gregory Moffat’s work and find a list of suggested resources on trauma, violence, parenting and other topics at his website, gregmoffatt.com

 

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Bethany Bray is a staff writer for Counseling Today. Contact her at bbray@counseling.org

 

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