Murder at Work: A Practical Guide for Prevention

By Robert Sollars

The statistics are startling.

The #1 killer of employees on the job is traffic accidents. The #2 killer is falls. But the #3 killer is murder—and it’s #1 for women. In addition, millions of Americans are threatened or harassed at work every year.

Far too often, managers believe that the solution to workplace violence is complicated—so complicated that it’s not worth investigating. If they do pursue the issue, they too often make the mistake of thinking that following a cookie–cutter plan from a book or guidelines from a professional organization is good enough.

This book does not have all the answers to the issue of workplace violence. No single book, expert, or organization does. Sometimes such violence is unavoidable, as you will read. Whether you have five employees or 5,000, you need to learn how to physically secure your property, how to reduce the risk of a violent incident, and how to recover in the event of one.

In this book’s 21 well-organized chapters, you’ll learn what workplace violence is, how to spot warning signs, how best to communicate with your employees concerning workplace violence, and much more—all from an expert with nearly 40 years of experience in the security field.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Sollars
• Release date: May 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463426081

Book preview

Dedication

I need to thank my wife, Eileen, for everything she has done for me in the past 18 years. She has stuck by me no matter what, through blindness, kidney failure, depression, cancer, and everything in between. I don’t think I could ask for, nor receive, any more than I do from her. She has been my motivation, inspiration, and strength through the years.

I must also thank my figurative little sister, Angela Paulson, for allowing me to be her big brother, for her willingness to accept my advice to keep her safe, and for the special bond we share.

I also wish to dedicate this book to everyone who needs to protect themselves, their employees, and their livelihood in the face of overwhelming odds in this violent world we live in. I hope I can make a difference and help some people return home to their families and loved ones none the worse for wear.

Table of Contents

Prelude—Diary of a Plot

Introduction

Chapter 1: What Is Workplace Violence?

Chapter 2: Types of Workplace Violence

Chapter 3: Attitudes That Foster Violence

Chapter 4: Profile of an Average Perpetrator

Chapter 5: Statistics

Chapter 6: The Warning Signs—Part 1

Chapter 7: The Warning Signs—Part 2

Chapter 8: Probability, Vulnerability, and Criticality

Chapter 9: Policies and Procedures

Chapter 10: Pre–Employment Screening

Chapter 11: Defusing the Human Bomb

Chapter 12: Physical Security

Chapter 13: Designing, Writing, and Implementing a VPRP

Chapter 14: Creating a Threat Assessment Team

Chapter 15: Designing, Writing, and Implementing a DRP

Chapter 16: Forming a Crisis Management Team

Chapter 17: Zero Tolerance

Chapter 18: Customer Service

Chapter 19: Health and Wellness

Chapter 20: Fight, Run, or Hide?

Chapter 21: Training

Conclusion

Afterword

About the Author

Prelude—Diary of a Plot

This is a fictionalized account of one possible workplace violence incident. The incidents and people have been taken from the thousands of reports that I’ve read and heard. None of the individuals or places in this account actually exist.

From the audio work diary of Andrea Paulsen, third shift supervisor at Paulsen Plastics, West St. Joseph, Kansas

March 20—Tonight is my first night as a supervisor. Wow, finally moving up the ladder. Third shift won’t be easy here, but it’ll work for now. I’ve been told that I have a shift of squirrely workers, so I’d best get out there and start meeting them.

March 23—Mom wasn’t kidding. This is a bunch of squirrely workers. It’s definitely a bit eclectic. It’ll take some getting used to these personalities; business school definitely didn’t tell me about this.

March 30—Getting used to the crew, finally, after a week. Most of them are just a little bit squirrely—others, well… There are only one or two people that really kind of bother me: Richard Reilly and Sandra Boil. They’re both a bit close to the edge, if you ask me, but I’m not a psychologist. Got to get the bottles moving sooner rather than later.

April 10—It’s sure been hectic the past week or so. Machines breaking down and putting us so far behind that Dad had to call the customer and tell them we’d be about a week behind in delivery. Boy, were they mad! They almost canceled the entire order. It didn’t help that Reilly has really started acting weird, lately. Don Jackson told me he muttered a threat to him under his breath. I’ll have to keep an eye on him.

April 16—We’re finally back up to full production. As long as the machines hold out, we should be able to make the shipment on time—I hope. Reilly is keeping to himself a lot, now. His head is always down, and he’s constantly acting like he’s going to fall asleep. I think I’ll have a talk with him after the shift is over.

April 30—Things are going well. I’ve learned a lot about almost everyone here except Boil and Reilly. Boil still sits alone most of the time, and Reilly is starting to get on my nerves about stuff. Also, his production is becoming increasingly erratic.

May 10—Well, I just had a long talk with Boil. I didn’t realize that things were so bad with her and her husband. It took a bit of coaxing and candid talk about her work performance, but I got it out of her. Her husband abuses the shit out of her almost every night. He beats on her and trashes her and everything about her. She was crying when she left here. He’s accusing her of having an affair with someone here at the plant. I saw the bruises on her arm and the blood blister on her back. I referred her to HR, and hopefully they can help. As it is, until it gets resolved, I’ll give her a break—as long as I can.

May 13—Riley is putting things in bad shape for us. He’s constantly making stupid little mistakes on the line. This morning he pushed the wrong computation into the computer and we lost more than an hour’s worth of quart bottles. They’re now 32.3 ounces, and the lids are too big for the necks. That’s going to cost us big.

May 15—I sat Riley down and tried to talk to him about his work issues. His concentration is off, and he’s constantly walking into and tripping over things, like he’s drunk! I checked him, and he’s not. Sent him for a drug test yesterday, and it came back negative for anything but caffeine and nicotine. Coffee and cigs. I told him that if he didn’t straighten up quick—real quick—I’d have to suspend or terminate him. All he did was shrug and mumble something. I’ll talk to HR in the morning about it and ask them what the hell to do.

May 26—Riley is back to work after the suspension. Ten days didn’t seem to help much. He’s back to his old tricks again. And it looks like he hasn’t slept in days. Eyes are red, he slurs his words when he talks, and he doesn’t speak very coherently, anyway! I think I’ll have to drug test him again.

May 29—I had to fire Riley this morning. He came in so drunk that you could smell him from across the room. There was no way I was going to let him anywhere near that machine. We’re already behind on our current order due to his past mistakes. We argued, and he stomped off and out in a huff. I couldn’t hear everything, but I thought I heard him mumbling something about how everyone was out to get him, and he’d take care of that problem.

June 3—When I came in tonight, there were security guards everywhere! Dad said that Riley had called and said he was going to shoot up the place. Scary stuff. I’m glad that Mom has ordered a lockdown of the factory, but man, it’s going to get hot in here without the doors open!

Oh my God, I hear gunshots! There he is, and he’s got a gun! He’s shooting everyone in sight. He just walked by Boyle and Hoolihan. He’s coming this way! Oh m…

Gunman Kills 3, Wounds 2 at Plastics Plant

Compiled by Tanner Gers

Today’s News Online

Monday, 8:54 a.m.

West St. Joseph, KS—A gunman walked into the Paulsen Modern Plastics manufacturing plant this morning and shot five people. Initial reports are that three are dead, including the daughter of the plant owner and the gunman.

The alleged shooter has been tentatively identified as Richard Riley, 43, a former employee at the plant. He was allegedly fired one week ago for reasons unknown at this time.

‘This is all so sudden, and we never expected it! It’s like someone flipped a switch on him, said Danielle Jones, a plant employee who worked with Riley for three years.

Another employee, Judy Hartmann, stated, There were security guards everywhere for the past couple of days, but no one expected Riley to do this.

The plant manager and owner, Rachel Paulsen, stated that she was heartbroken by the death of her daughter and her employees. I never expected anyone who worked here to act like this. I try to treat them all like family. But I guess that even in the best of families, things go awry.

Rosa, a support staff employee who didn’t wish to have her last name used, stated that Ms. Paulsen treats us like family and is constantly there anytime one of us needs help in any form.

Updated: Monday, 11:45 a.m.

Richard Riley, the suspected gunman in this morning’s rampage, has been officially identified by police as the shooter at Paulsen Modern Plastics manufacturing plant. According to initial reports, the shooting occurred at 3:16 a.m.

Riley was terminated from his job as a machine operator earlier this week by the plant owner’s daughter, a floor supervisor at the plant, for several issues, according to Human Resources director Kevin Ford.

Ford would not comment as to the exact issues that caused Riley’s termination. Unconfirmed sources inside the plant, however, stated that the issues included carelessness, intoxication on the job, insubordination by swearing at co–workers and his supervisor, and threats made against the facility and employees.

Updated: Monday, 12:36 p.m.

The death toll in the Paulsen Modern Plastics manufacturing plant shooting has risen from three to four, as an additional victim has died at the hospital.

Traci Carr, an Irish immigrant, died from her injuries at noon today, according to a hospital spokesman.

The other victims were the plant owner’s daughter and Eric Schuetz, in addition to the gunman, Richard Riley.

According to Rachel Paulsen, plant manager and owner, grief counselors have been called in, and the plant will be closed for at least a week to allow the employees to grieve and mourn their coworkers.

It will cost us some money, but people are more important than money to us at Paulsen. We strive to treat all employees as family. That’s why we’re doing this, in addition to paying them while the plant is closed.

Business Journal

Friday

by Eileen Nelson

Paulsen Plastics expected to lose numerous contracts after the shooting earlier this week

Because of delaying resuming their manufacturing of plastic bottles and jars for the food industry, Paulsen Plastics is expected to lose at least seven contracts totaling more than $30 million, according to business and industry analysts.

This total could rise depending on how long it is before the plant can resume normal operations. According to some consultants, it could take as long as six to eight weeks.

It takes that long, generally, for a company to recover from an incident of violence such as this and resume normal operations, said Toni Young, an independent business consultant.

Plastics manufacturing analyst Anna Sweeney stated that it could be sooner if the family–oriented atmosphere that Paulsen likes to tout actually works as it should, Mainly because family try to take care of and lean on each other.

Robert D. Sollars, a security expert who works with manufacturing plants, stated that the company did several things wrong in their approach to the shooter.

Number one, it appears that they gave the shooter far too many chances and tried to help him too much. An analogy would be that they acted like a father whose son had gone awry. That could have given Riley the incentive to gain the revenge he wanted. The plant was the easiest target.

Sollars went on to say that it appears that Riley was given at least three or four chances in every instance over a period of several months. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses and terminate them.

Rachel Paulsen, the plant owner, stated, I don’t feel that we gave anyone too many chances or helped too much. Before the incident, we followed our policies and procedures and the law when it came to handling Riley. As family, it’s our duty to try to care for our employees. And while some say we could be down for two months or more, I think that with overtime, we should be back to full production and at full capacity within a week or so after we reopen. We’ll keep counselors on site for a few weeks, just in case someone needs them. Our Employee Assistance Program will be available to anyone who needs to take advantage of it, at no cost to them.

Sollars gave the Business Journal a list of 24 warning signs for an employee who may be ready to go postal on coworkers. He also stated that people have a tendency to ignore those signs as just personality traits and not problematic issues.

Introduction

According to Ronn Lavit, PhD, a psychiatrist in Phoenix, Arizona: Violence may take many forms. It may take physical form and manifest as aggressive physical contact toward another, or violence may be of a verbal nature, when someone has a short temper and responds verbally in an aggressive manner toward others. There are also people who are very controlling of others, and this control may be of a coercive nature. This control can be particularly damaging in relationships, which can be evidenced both in a home environment and a work environment. Those who are violent may feel the need to control or have power over others and/or may have a strong sense of mistrust/suspicion of others and may interpret their conduct in a negative way, which keeps them on guard against others.

Now that you have a psychological explanation of violence, let me give you a little bit of the history of workplace violence (WPV) from my own observations, which I think may intrigue you.

I firmly believe that the roots of modern WPV started back in the late 1950s. Attitudes in the United States began to change, and some regions that were extremely conservative became liberalized—San Francisco, for example.

Going along with this liberalization were the 1960s attitudes of do your own thing and let it all hang out. The parents of the ’60s allowed their children to experiment and try out their rebelliousness in innumerable ways: drugs, sex, riots, rabble–rousing in the streets for no good reason, and then just lying around and letting the government take care of them.

In the 1970s, we all became part of the Pepsi Generation. This was the Me Generation. It’s all about me and what makes me feel good about myself and my surroundings. Again, permissiveness, drugs, sex, disco, and myriad other elements contributed to this attitude.

Low self–esteem, no self–confidence, depression, and permissiveness pushed us on our way. These were the buzzwords of social commentators that explained what was happening. Unfortunately, it only got worse as the century neared its end, even with more than 20 years to go.

In the 1980s, it was greed is good. Still, it was all about me and what makes me feel good and better about myself and where I am in the world. In this sense, it was the idea that we could do and get away with almost anything that made us feel better about our self–esteem and psyche. It’ll make me feel good to go kill those sons of bitches fucking up my life. I’ll show them, by God! Too many people did just that. For those who don’t remember, think about the Post Office and the many tragedies that occurred there.

In the 1990s, the attitude of I’ll do what makes me feel better continued, and we saw the incidence of WPV grow exponentially. We went from incidents that claimed only one or two lives per day to having more than three per day murdered at work every year.

Now, in the new millennium, we are back down to only one or two a day. But as the book title suggests, one is still too many.

Far too often, C–suite managers believe that the solution to WPV is complicated and therefore requires a complicated answer and program—so complicated that it’s not worth doing.

Worse, because they think it’s complicated, they make the solution complicated, and they miss the point. They think that following a cookie–cutter plan from a book or guidelines from a professional organization or book by an expert is good enough. But they leave out the most important part of the plan’s success: employees.

This book does not have all the answers to the issue of workplace violence. Sometimes, WPV is unavoidable, as you’ll read later. No one knows how to prevent all incidents. I don’t, and others don’t. No book will provide all the answers, because no book can. The best we can hope for is to lessen the liability and reduce the risk of an incident happening.

If you’re looking for a cure–all for WPV, this book isn’t it. Nor is any other book or any person you’ll talk to. You can hire consultants, turn your facility into a prison, and spend millions of dollars to prevent WPV, but the absolute truth is that there will always be the potential for it to occur in your business, no matter what you plan or do or how you treat your employees.

Employees can be murdered because there are always weapons to be found and used in the workplace. An office can’t do without staplers, landline sets, and other such instruments. Want to ban them? Then you may want to ban ceramic coffee cups, pens, pencils, letter openers, hammers, screwdrivers, and any number of other such deadly weapons.

I know you’ve heard this before, probably from your mother, father, or teachers: There are no guarantees in life. Basically, this means that no matter how you plan or what you do, there is no ironclad guarantee that nothing bad will happen. And in the case of WPV, it is assured that someone, somewhere and somehow, will make an event happen despite your best efforts.

That’s what this book is about: your best efforts. Recognizing and preventing WPV is a full–time job, and it’s not an easy one. You have to be ever–vigilant and observant of what’s happening. Many times, especially in larger companies, people fall through the cracks, and that causes them to burst forth in rage. At other times, it allows them the time and presence to methodically plan and implement their murderous spree.

So whether it’s a verbal or a physical assault, or even if it turns deadly, be ever watchful. If you do that, then you might be able to recognize and prevent an incident.

With workplace violence, recognition is 75% of the prevention process. If you can recognize the potential problem, then you have a much better chance of keeping it from actually happening. If you can prevent it, or at least mitigate the impact, then you’ll save both lives and financial resources.

Taking security precautions, turning your office into a gulag, and generally making your employees think they’re working for some super–secret alien organization isn’t the way to combat WPV. As I said, recognition is the key to preventing it. And in order to recognize it, you have to know what to look for.

The following piece of fiction exemplifies how some victims may be forgotten after such an incident. It was written by a friend of mine and tells the truth in a heart–rending way. I thought it would be appropriate to help start this book, along with the fictional account in the Prelude.

My friend passed away on January 18, 2019, and this is in her memory as well. RIP, Catnip!

Dress Me in Pink

by Sharon King–Booker

Now I lay me down to sleep, Ellen, my five–year–old daughter’s, prayer began.

As I sat at her bedside, listening, my thoughts turned to a darker realm. My marriage was over, job lost, and now? Now what?

Please, Daddy, say you will.

I returned my attention, picked her up and held her warm little body close. Will what, sweetheart? I asked.

If I should die before I wake, you know, Daddy, like my prayer says, will you dress me in my pink dress? You know, the one with the rosebuds that Mommy bought for me.

I held her on my knee, careful not to let her see the tears in my eyes.

Of course I will, honey, if that’s what you want. Now, drink your hot chocolate for Daddy, and go to sleep.

I kissed the top of her head, and she drained the cup. I put her into her bed and tucked the covers around her and left the room.

The next morning, as the sun was starting to show itself, I went into my daughter’s room. I searched the closet, found the pink dress, and carefully, lovingly, dressed her. Then I picked her up, carried her into our bedroom, and laid her beside my wife. I lingered awhile, caressing their lifeless bodies.

Now what will I do?

Then I decided.

I loaded my gun, added extra ammunition clips to my pocket, and then I went to work.

After attending to those who had caused me to lose my job—well, my body, too, would lie beside those of my wife and daughter.

Chapter 1

What Is Workplace Violence?

This is one of the first questions you need to look at and ask when beginning the task of trying to prevent an incident and formulating a plan. What exactly is workplace violence (WPV), and why should I be concerned?

WPV means a lot of different things to practically everyone you ask. Many people will tell you that WPV only occurs when someone comes into the facility and kills someone else. Others will tell you that WPV is only when someone gets injured inside the facility.

Note the theme: only at work, or only when someone gets injured or killed.

While those are partially true, they miss the entirety of the definition. If you’re not looking at the whole definition, then you’ll be shocked when an incident does occur. In fact, WPV has a much broader definition.

WPV can happen anywhere, anytime, to anyone, for any reason. It can even happen away from the business. It’s something that can happen to any employee, in any place. If it occurs away from work but because of work, then it is WPV.

Here are a couple of examples.

In Glendale, Arizona, a pipe bomb went off in a person’s driveway early one morning. Was the incident caused by terrorism? What it racial, religious, or what? In this case, the perpetrator was a coworker of the victim, and the two had been having a long–running feud at work in the Peoria (Arizona) School District. Because it was work–related, it was classified as WPV.

Another incident occurred in Phoenix, Arizona, and involved a bus driver who accidentally cut off another vehicle on the highway. The driver of the car came up alongside the bus and started firing