Biography
Dr. Straub is the Director of the National Police Foundation’s Center for Mass Violence Response Studies. Dr. Straub has led in-depth studies of the San Bernardino terrorist attack, the Kalamazoo mass shooting, the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting, and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. The Center was recently engaged to conduct a review of the University of North Carolina-Charlotte shooting.
Dr. Straub leads the Averted School Violence database, a national project funded by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), which studies averted and completed mass violence incidents in schools, colleges and universities. He has also led a U.S. Department of Homeland Security funded countering violence and extremism project in Boston.
Dr. Straub is a 30-year veteran of federal and local law enforcement, having served as the Police Chief in Spokane, Washington; the Public Safety Director in Indianapolis; the Public Safety Commissioner in White Plains, New York; and the New York City Police Department’s Deputy Commissioner of Training and Assistant Commissioner for Counterterrorism. He also served as a member of the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force during his tenure with the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
Dr. Straub holds a BA in Psychology, a MA in Forensic Psychology and a PhD in Criminal Justice. He is a member of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Working Group on Behavior Analysis and Behavioral Threat Assessment and the COPS’ School Safety Working Group.
Dr. Straub has authored articles and reports on mass violence, critical incident response, youth violence, and homeland security. He has testified before Congress, participated in White House briefings, and spoken at national and international conferences regarding the prevention, response and recovery from public mass violence attacks, averting school violence, and youth violence prevention.