Work Place Violence

[MJS]

Link

MANCHESTER —
Omar Thornton almost slept through his 6 a.m. wakeup call Tuesday, springing to life only after the teenage brother of his girlfriend nudged him awake.

The 34-year-old kissed his girlfriend Kristi Hannah goodbye, told her he loved her, and then left her East Windsor apartment for work at Hartford Distributors Inc. in Manchester, where he was to meet about 7 a.m. with company and union officials about allegations that he had stolen beer from the beverage wholesaler.

Within hours, he was lying dead on an office floor, having taken his own life as police closed in after a rampage that left eight co-workers dead and made him the biggest mass murderer in state history.

This is an incident that happened yesterday and its still being investigated, however, my focus of this thread, isn't necessarily to use this incident as the focal point, but to talk about violence in the workplace overall.

According to the article, and news reports that I've seen, the person in question here, was described as a quiet guy. He was being investigated for a theft from the company. He was described as cool and calm while he was shooting.

So, to get the ball rolling, I'll just toss out a few things:

How are things like this prevented? Are there any warning signs that people should be looking out for?

 

[Bill Mattocks]

I do not know how such things are prevented, except by enhanced security at building entrances and exits; of course that is not foolproof either.

As to warning signs, I don't know. But I did find this:

http://info.publicintelligence.net/ROCICSpecialResearchReportActiveShooter.pdf

PROFILE AND CHARACTERISTICS
OF WORKPLACE SHOOTERS
• 25 to 50-year-old white males
• Violent history
• Loner
• Fascination with weapons
• Exhibits depression, paranoia, self-destructive
behaviors, or other personalitydisorder-related behavior
• Jealously, insecurity, or revenge motives
• Stress caused by:
- Excessive workload / lack of sufficient
time to complete tasks
- Poor supervision / management
- Unstable corporate climate
- Unclear responsibilities
- Philosophical differences between organization and employee
- Unresolved frustrations
- Unexpected/significant change at work or
home

This particular PDF says it is restricted to LEO use only, but it was out there when I did a Google search, so uh....

 

[RandomPhantom700]

Interesting that the list includes "violent history". So often when we hear about these workplace-shooting cases, as in the one from the OP, there's always the "he was such a nice guy! There weren't any indicators" claims by the families/friends of the perpetrator. Are the speakers purposefully ignoring the violent history, or is the media overplaying the occurrences when there wasn't such a history?

 

[Bill Mattocks]

Interesting that the list includes "violent history". So often when we hear about these workplace-shooting cases, as in the one from the OP, there's always the "he was such a nice guy! There weren't any indicators" claims by the families/friends of the perpetrator. Are the speakers purposefully ignoring the violent history, or is the media overplaying the occurrences when there wasn't such a history?

Well, I would have no knowledge of any of my neighbor's or coworker's criminal history, if any. And if something were to happen, I would imagine that news crews looking for fodder for the evening news would be asking neighbors and coworkers for their opinions, which would be necessarily incomplete.

I have often read smaller reports, days later, about this or that person and how 'as it turns out', they had an extensive criminal record, blah, blah, blah. Typically just means that the media finally got around to digging into public records instead of relying on reactions from friends and so on.

 

[Bruno@MT]

Personally I think there is nothing you can do to prevent this, nor can you easily see it coming. Sometimes the shooter has some weird quirks or is a loner or whatever, but so are hundreds of thousands others who are completely harmless.

If there are clear indicators that something is about to happen, then the police or whoever has jurisdiction can check him out. This is what happened a couple months ago when we had that discussion about the guy who sent his coworkers into hiding and bought an assault rifle and a handgun. And that person got his weapons back once the investigation was completed.

More than that is impossible. Unless you work at heavily secured facilities like military or NSA headquarters or something like that, nothing is preventing you from showing up at work with an assault rifle and emptying a couple of clips in the cube farm. And if you go about with with some premeditation and knowledge of the buildings, then you can kill dozens before someone even has a chance to think about shooting back.