The Violent Person at Work: The Ultimate Guide to Identifying Dangerous Persons

By Laurence Barton

Stalking. Sexual harassment. Mass shootings. Employers are increasingly expected to have a plan to identify and manage threats posed by employees in the workplace. But what questions and issues should you contemplate? Does involving police early make the situation better or potentially worse? What specific words and issues should be addressed and avoided as a case unfolds?

In this authoritative new guide, Dr Laurence Barton draws on over thirty years’ experience as the world’s leading threat assessor to outline how to prevent, manage, and mitigate threats made by employees, contractors, customers, former employees and others. He unlocks key issues to help the reader navigate new privacy laws, psychological evaluation, and employee communications when a potentially dangerous person is angry with your most vital resource: your people.

This is an invaluable new handbook for businesses and HR, legal, and security professionals worldwide.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Release date: Apr 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781785272745

Book preview

The Violent Person at Work

Also by Laurence Barton

Crisis in Organizations

Crisis in Organizations II

Ethics: The Enemy in the Workplace

Crisis Leadership Now

The Violent Person at Work

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO IDENTIFYING DANGEROUS PERSONS

Laurence Barton

Anthem Press

An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company

www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2020

by ANTHEM PRESS

75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK

or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK

and

244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA

Copyright © Laurence Barton 2020

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN-13: 978-1-78527-272-1 (Hbk)

ISBN-10: 1-78527-272-1 (Hbk)

This title is also available as an e-book.

Disclaimer

This book is not a source of legal or clinical advice. Always consult law enforcement when facing a threat of potential harm. The author and publisher assume no liability for any decision you may or may not make as a result of this work. The various situations and crimes referenced herein should not be considered evidence or presumed to stand alone as the only relevant facts of a case. This work does not represent the views of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or any other agency or client.

For Eliza

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. The Dynamics of Violence @ Work

2. The Causes of Workplace Violence

3. Separating the Employee @ Risk

4. Evaluating Risk Outside the Organization

5. The Work Environment

6. Fitness for Duty Evaluations: Complex and Imperative for At-Risk Employees

7. Behind the Smiles: Hidden Demons and Employees

8. Extremism @ Work

9. Clinical Dynamics of Disruptive Employees

Author Q & A

Threat Assessment Guide

Threat Management System

After Suicide Impacts a Workplace

The FBI and Threat Interpretation

Final Thought

About the Author

INTRODUCTION

I don’t know where to begin.

Is it with school shootings? After all, many of those injured and murdered in school attacks were teachers and administrators. That’s workplace violence, right?

Maybe I should start with traditional work settings, such as an office or factory. But what about people who are attacked while working in a nontraditional setting, such as a reporter who is fatally attacked by a former colleague during a live broadcast?

Police officers—good to begin there. People get that. They carry firearms and have to chase down suspects. They often get injured or killed in the process. Everyone will understand that.

But wait, there was that dermatologist in Chicago. He didn’t wear a police uniform or carry a weapon. The killer was a psychotic former patient who thought he was chronically ill because of treatments prescribed by that doctor. It’s chilling—the doctor only had one appointment with that patient several years before and the patient held a grudge for years. He never once communicated that he was dismayed, let alone seeking retaliation—begin there?

No. Focus on human trafficking and people will understand that violence at work isn’t always caused by a disgruntled employee or a former contractor. There’s an industry out there that creates and perpetuates violence targeting vulnerable people. Start with billionaire Jeffrey Epstein. Some will say: "that’s extreme, and it really doesn’t apply to the workplace. Hmm … except for the dozens of pilots that saw underage girls, many times, join Epstein, Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton and their cronies being taken to isolated locations for entertainment." Do pilots and people who are employed to clean homes have an obligation to report an assault? Hmm.

Covid-19. At first, no one thought about workplace violence as an unprecedented and complex virus swept the globe in 2020. But the signs we learned decades earlier about how people reacted to disasters in Bhopal, India, or Chernobyl, Russia, and elsewhere were there: as massive numbers of people became instantly unemployed and unable to pay for food and rent, emotions moved from shock to dismay and, for some, anger and physical violence.

Terrorists. Got it. They have killed thousands of people in recent years while innocent people were working, whether completing a cartoon for the magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, or working at the World Trade Center in New York on 9/11/2001, or clerics who died during massacres at two mosque services in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019. And just imagine, one of the perpetrators decided to live video stream the massacre on Facebook. Fifty-one were killed and 49 others were injured. Even content moderators who work around the clock at social media companies and remove outrageous content every minute of every day were shocked—I just deleted that post and it’s reposted by thousands? That’s a fair place to begin—there’s always an opportunist out there who loves to shock, rather than grieve.

What about the guard who worked for a huge security company, G4S, and who walked into The Pulse nightclub in Orlando and murdered 49 patrons, injuring another 53? Did anyone actually conduct a background check on that guy?

No. I need to put it all of this into context. Violence at work isn’t new, but it is increasing in frequency and global in scope. Remind people that it’s not just a bunch of crazy Americans who have guns that shoot people at a movie theatre in Colorado.

Come to think of it, the most violent person in the history of workplace attacks wasn’t a customer or an employee, it was a supervisor—a boss! And it was a woman, even better. People don’t expect that. Tell them to read about Countess Elizabeth Báthory of Hungary. She was accused of torturing and murdering 652 people, mostly maids and household servants, in the 1600s.

Explain what we mean by people who think they are an avenger—any interest? Maybe Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. That lone wolf, a self-appointed zealot—he targeted CEOs, professors, engineers and others whom he felt were enemies of natural thinking. Didn’t he put nails and shrapnel inside the explosive devices he mailed to victims, often at their place of business? And just think—those who were the most educated, experienced criminal profilers in the world missed the essential clues Kaczynski sprinkled into communications for 18 years because they focused on outdated personality profiles instead of analyzing the tactics and words he employed.

That’s the way I think before giving almost every presentation—whether in a television interview after a workplace assault or when speaking to the senior leadership of a corporation, or briefings I offer at the FBI. Where do I start, and how can I effectively thread all of this together?

In this, my fifth book on the subject of reducing risk in the workplace, I’m at no loss for material, for workplace tragedies continue with increasing frequency. It troubles me that despite more awareness by employers regarding volatile people and mental health, the pace of threats and assaults continues to escalate. But we now have real evidence, real empirical evidence, that is making a difference. Many planned attacks in the workplace have been prevented in recent years because the notion if you see or hear something, say something is starting to gain momentum in so many work settings.

The challenge is whether all employers, ranging from small and large businesses to nonprofits, know what to do when and if a person makes or poses a threat. And that is the objective of this work, to unlock what I’ve learned in helping manage over three thousand cases of people who were on a path, or misjudged to be on a path, to attack people at work.

It’s important to remember that every day people come to work somewhere in the world with an expectation that their shift or workday will be a normal one. Nothing bad will happen, until it does. And then, as police respond and the site is facing mayhem, words emerge:

Trauma counseling

Victims

Surveillance footage

Family

News media—outside, wanting a statement from someone, now

Twitter

What did we know?

When did we know it?

What did we know about it?

This book is interdisciplinary in nature.

Our journey will take us through a countryside where you will see signs for psychology, criminology, victimology, trauma, human resources, surveillance systems—each playing a unique role in preventing the next attack.

I am grateful to the talented team at Anthem Press, led by Tej P. S. Sood, for encouraging me to deliver this interdisciplinary inquiry. My amazingly talented wife, Eliza Alden, displayed patience and guidance throughout. And to the many clients that I support daily on a global basis, please know how much I appreciate the trust you place in me.

As you review the insights that follow, my hope is that you will have higher appreciation for those in security, human resources, law enforcement and other disciplines who work so hard each day to keep people safe at work. They are often overlooked or even thanked for their good efforts. Many of those talented professionals were helpful in preparing this work.

1

THE DYNAMICS OF VIOLENCE @ WORK

Work should be a safe place.

But increasingly, it’s not.

Globally, we have witnessed an annual average 6 percent increase in assaults and homicides in the workplace since 2001. And the number of people injured and killed by a coworker, customer or former employee is continuing to escalate despite increased vigilance by many throughout society.

What’s going on?

In reading this book, you may be better equipped to identify and mitigate cases where a person moves from ideation to overt violence. And capturing this insight, if you may then address workplace violence by being an informed leader, avoiding scare tactics, you can reduce organizational risk, keep your people safer and create an environment that is more attuned to a volatile world.

And it is volatile.

According to the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), the world’s largest organization devoted to HR management, many of the Fortune 1000 companies have an active workplace violence program. These companies commonly have a team that receives and processes threats from customers, employees and others. They commonly have a dedicated team that analyzes provocative comments when someone is separated for cause, such as threatening to return to accost a coworker they despised. After being separated from the employer, if that person escalates their anger and begins to also harass the supervisor who exited them, that employer may turn to law enforcement or others to heighten security awareness and monitor the whereabouts of the provocateur.

But most employers are not members of the Fortune 1000.

In reality, more than 88 percent of the world’s employers are small, with less than 100 employees, according to the World Labor Organization. They don’t have full-time security directors, and most don’t even have an employee handbook. They are the flower stores, trucking companies, retailers and farmers who employ the majority of working-age adults anywhere in the world.

So, whether your enterprise is small or gigantic, for-profit or charity-based, you still face comparable circumstances, just in different proportions:

the employee suffering from depression who tells a coworker that she is thinking of killing her husband who left with her children for a new partner who also works for the same company;

the customer, unhappy with how long it has taken to get a refund, that is now seen stalking the facility and is now believed to be the person who fired a few bullets at a storefront in another city, just to make a point;

the former employee, the one you separated two years ago for causing a cyber breach, who was never able to get a new full-time job, who writes to your CEO claiming that when he kills himself, it will be only after he also kills one of your employees.

If all of this sounds far-fetched, talk with those who work in security or human resources.

While their job description may include plenty of other important tasks, much of their time is often spent on the issues you’ll read about here: personality conflict, statements suggesting retaliation, infidelity, people who are overmedicated due to sleep deprivation and many others. It’s not pretty, but much of these cases can be managed before they blossom into a violent outcome if the employer has considered:

how to engage and inform the workforce about preventing violence;

how to be situationally aware so that a qualified person can speak with the supplier, contractor or anyone else who makes a remark about violence;

how the employer will speak with an employee who increasingly discusses extremist views to coworkers over lunch and who suggests that it will take some casualties to demonstrate his point.

Someone doesn’t need to show a gun or knife in order to engage in workplace violence.

The majority of physical assaults at work are never reported to the police. Many cases of conflict typically begin with words, arguments followed by fistfights. Because the employer is small, no regulatory agency or police department will likely be called. After being physically separated, two coworkers in the midst of conflict will go back to work and rarely engage in any escalation—they lost their temper, but not their job.

In other cases, the ideation of violence by one of them may emerge: I’m wondering who snitched on me for drinking on the job. I swear I’ll kill whoever called the compliance hotline. And sometimes, they do.

The numbers vary from year to year, but a sound estimate is that about 11 persons are murdered each day at work somewhere in the world by coworkers, former employees or customers. The number of people injured from workplace violence—pushed downstairs, hit on the shoulder by a hammer, knifed—is estimated at nearly 4.1 million worldwide each year. And those are just the ones that are reported to occupational health agencies. So, the scope of the issue is enormous because in between being aware that a person shared a threat and their actual act of violence is a terrain that is largely difficult to see, let alone measure: mental illness, grievances, bullying and more. It’s rough out there.

The Pathway to Violence

You may have heard the term Pathway to Violence, first articulated by F. S. Calhoun and S. W. Weston in 2003. This is an easy-to-grasp model suggesting that most (but not all) people who pursue violence go through stages—they often first consider how to hurt others (ideation) and climb a set of emotional stairs before they actually commit a crime. Keep that in mind as you think about cases you may have managed in the past or may need to manage in the future.

As a threat consultant, I am on call 24/7, to dozens of multinational corporations. Over the years I have managed thousands of cases, including:

A third-shift, highly qualified engineer who was engaged in petty disagreements with a coworker at a flight training facility for a major airline; he stabbed his coworker to death with a screwdriver after a verbal disagreement spiraled out of control. Two coworkers witnessed the murder. His mother learned that he was killed in a Tweet, not from the employer.

A quality control supervisor for a manufacturer with an impeccable 21-year record of employment; after being counselled by two site leaders for virtually falling asleep the day before, he stormed out of a counseling meeting, went to his car and returned with a pistol, murdering both persons before taking his own life in the restroom. Over thirty persons ran from the site in the midst of gunfire.

A customer service representative for a fintech company in China who confided to coworkers that she was increasingly overwhelmed with work and considering suicide. Concerned for her well-being, the team approached their human resource manager. That HR manager, a novice, unilaterally decided to hire a local psychologist to meet with the concerned coworkers on the day when the suicidal person was off. The psychologist demanded confidentiality with the teammates, but the employee found out about the secret meeting within 90 minutes. She attempted to kill herself that night by consuming rat poison and was hospitalized for six weeks and was eventually separated by the company for continuing to threaten herself and others.

A production employee of a major retailer assigned to a huge distribution facility who was separated for threatening his girlfriend in front of nearly a dozen coworkers after she privately informed him that she was ending their engagement. He left the building distressed but not agitated. And then be began nearly a year-long campaign that featured hundreds of phone calls, letters and e-mails accusing the female of unspeakable acts of child assault, all of which deemed untrue by following a police investigation. Separated by their employer he now had the time, and unfortunately the resources, to destroy her life, let alone her reputation. The courts and police were anemic. The woman eventually quit her job, changed her name and was moved by the company to assume a role in another state.

The first two events were covered by the news media because there were fatalities. The last two never gained headline status because, while they caused an enormous drain on the impacted employees and their employer, there were no fatalities. These cases are illustrative of situations that can be the cause of many impacts on your enterprise. Just a few of them include:

fear and concern among employees for their safety;

cost of increased surveillance and security measures at a site after a threat is shared;

loss of production time due to site closures or adjustments because of an assault or threatened act of violence;

cost of litigation after a serious injury or fatality;

decline in sales and productivity as regulators and investigators conduct a due diligence review on-site following an assault;

changes needed in background search, interview and hiring strategies to reduce the potentiality of a bad hire.

There are so many awkward situations that emerge after an attack at work. People never think about how they will arrange funeral services for one of their workers killed at a job site until they have to step into that unchartered territory. Many are shocked to learn that the legal department of the company may suggest that the employer not send flowers to any family that lost someone in a workplace attack in a belief that this act of kindness could be seen as a sign of guilt or vulnerability. What?

So welcome to a world that has spawned countless workshops and podcasts, as well as a sprawling industry of self-proclaimed experts in workplace violence. While some try to scare employers into taking action, I’m hoping to educate you with the essentials I share as the highest rated instructor for The FBI Academy. That sounds egotistical and I guess it is, but here’s where rating matters: law enforcement leaders are no different than you: they also make the occasional bad hires. They sometimes employ officers who suffer from clinical depression. They encounter fistfights and physical clashes over personality differences. And now, globally, more than any other occupation, police officers take their own lives. Yes, suicide is highest among police officers than in any other job in the world. So, when I deliver a course at the Academy, we spend a full day revealing how divorce, mediocre compensation, internal affairs and alcohol all play a role in moving a law enforcement officer along that same Pathway to Violence that your employees face. We’re all the same—it’s just the work environment that may be different.

So, keep these initial thoughts in mind as you consider the terrain of the threat landscape:

Research cases within your industry to better understand risk and mitigation efforts. As a university professor and former president of three colleges, I can tell you that higher education, like law enforcement, is rife with violence of all kinds.

The chancellor of the University of California Santa Cruz, Denise Denton, committed suicide in 2006 by jumping off the roof after the relationship with her partner ended. Faculty cases are equally revealing. Amy Bishop, a biology professor at the University of Alabama, murdered three colleagues and injured three at a faculty meeting after being denied tenure in 2010; she was known to be volatile, argumentative and threatening, but no protective measures were taken at the meeting when the decision was rendered. At the University of Pittsburgh, an acutely mentally ill patient, John Shick, was being treated at a mental health clinic in 2012—he had made numerous threats to staff and physicians that were known and documented. Several people investigated the situation, but case management was poor; Shick shot and killed one and wounded seven others.

Engage with professional associations to gain insight on how pre-employment screening and interview techniques can help with safer candidate choices.

The International Security Industry Organization (ISIO) commits extensive resources to helping employers reduce their exposure to a person who may be gang-affiliated or be part of a family terror network that engages in crime targeting a specific community or industry. The American Society for Industrial Security (ASIS) based in Virginia was launched in 1955 and offers Certified Protection Professional (CPP) designation, achieved after robust study on the essentials of protecting your people and all other assets. Their annual meetings, which for many years featured informed insight on threats and mitigation techniques, have unfortunately turned into massive bazaars where vendors hawk surveillance systems, drone monitoring and biometric devices that unfortunately have no relevancy to threat management. Yet some books they publish are first rate.

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is a global network of HR leaders that does a credible job of offering insight on prevention tools, not just HR ones, on identifying the causes of conflict at work and case resolution. The Association of Threat Assessment Professionals (ATAP) also offers useful training.

Hire objective, nonemotional investigators who are skilled at fact finding. When you believe a person could potentially endanger your workforce, you will need a person skilled at data collecting, interview techniques and evidence building. Cultivate a network of those who have worked in retail loss prevention, for example, as a practical first step. They are often street smart.

Writing in The Master Investigator (Vol. 5, 2019, p. 27), Juan Kirsten notes: The importance of cultural awareness and how to use methods of cultural behavior dictates that not all people can be master investigators. Personal character traits could cloud their vision of others impacting on the quality and quantity of information extracted. Critical thinking investigation demands that skillsets must be used, which are; to read a person-of-interest to determine if they are working in concert with others - either voluntarily or under duress. Consequently, the investigator must be self-aware of their emotions, for example, any form or bias towards human beings in any which way will impact on their methods of gathering information. This bias may extend towards their personal ideals, as in, compromising their moral fiber, religious beliefs or political affiliations. My experience has been that capable corporate investigators have a low ego; have studied or worked in behavioral sciences, human resources or loss prevention; and have an appetite for solving puzzles, both human and otherwise.

Understand that no interview, pre- or postemployment, is routine. It is stunning to see the results of companies that significantly modified their candidate selection criteria and interview processes in recent years. By moving from a focus on the candidate’s skill sets to their behavioral and work ethic profile, the employer is able to gain powerful insight on the most salient question: is this person going to be a positive contributor or a menace? Several tech companies have begun to measure for a civility quotient (CQ) as a comparison to the performance potentiality of a candidate: said another way and quite succinctly, do you think the person is a kind one? It sounds basic, but in the race to hire, we often overlook the demeanor, the smile, the follow-up thank you note that can differentiate the entitled from the sincere.

Remember that many airlines, transportation and software companies—those with special fiduciary obligations to hire ethical and highly focused individuals—also make mistakes in hiring. Your job is to ensure that your hiring managers are focused not only on job demands but also on others that frame a civility quotient such as asking a job candidate: how do you manage stress? Is taking time off from work hard to do? If someone asked you to keep their confidence but you suspect there’s a possible violation of our policies, how would you manage that situation?

These seemingly uncomfortable questions can yield fascinating, sometimes decision-altering, results. And remember, too, that deception is timeless. In 970 BC, two women each claimed a baby was hers, and King Solomon had to decide who was the actual mother of the baby. He threatened to cut the baby in half and determined who the true mother is by the different reactions of the two women. The lesson: observation is as important as listening. Some of the most informed polygraph examiners tell me that looking for deception in the eyes and physical movements of a person being interviewed can be as revealing as test results on a machine.

Canada’s top investigators learned this the hard way. Their very best couldn’t crack one of the most complex series of sexual assaults and murders for years because the perpetrator simply did not meet widely accepted criteria in criminology that defined deviance. David Russell Williams was charged with two counts of first-degree murder and more than 80 other charges of breaking and entering, sexual assault and robbery.

Williams was also the highest ranked commander in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He led flight crews that transported Queen Elizabeth II, among other notables.

Back in 1987, Williams was considered a model aviator and base commander. By 2010, as police throughout Ontario and beyond scratched their heads as a litany of assaults escalated, he was the least likely perpetrator of sadist, sexually motivated attacks on women, typically in their homes and often in remote areas. But a detailed, discreet investigation led to Williams as a prime suspect. Interrogators realized that breaking his high occupational identity and bravado would be challenging. A detailed protocol of questions proceeded by friendly and pure chat was necessary if Williams was to admit to a disturbing array of rapes, assaults and murder. On February 7 of that year, Williams was interrogated at Ottawa Police headquarters by Detective Staff Sergeant Jim Smyth. Starting from around 3 p.m., Smyth chatted with, as opposed to confronting, Williams. His interview techniques were masterful.

By the ninth hour of interrogation, Williams was describing his crimes.

As part of the sexual energy he achieved by initially stealing the underwear of victims, Williams was climbing the Pathway to Violence. He moved from burglary to physical assault. He proceeded to then take thousands of photographs of victims and their garments. (An excellent read is Camouflaged Killer: The Shocking Double Life of Canadian Air Force Colonel Russell Williams by David A. Gibb.)

Eventually, Williams climbed furthermore steps on the Pathway—now murdering victims. Excerpts of his confession were shown at Williams’ sentencing hearing on October 20, 2010, and can be seen on YouTube. Williams is serving multiple life sentences with no chance of parole. Williams’ wife, who claimed that she knew nothing of unexplained absences from home and was puzzled that their attic contained a massive 23-year collection of perverted items and photos her husband had collected, changed her name and moved to the United States.

There’s a reason why results from a polygraph examination are not admissible in courts of law: people can be deceptive on one or multiple occasions and have perfected their craft with such skill that any machine-driven measurement of their emotions doesn’t register the lie. Some child psychologists believe that lying is often perfected at a young age and simply escalates in depth and success with maturity. I agree with them.

At the workplace, without a polygraph, we often want to believe the person accused of stealing product and who now screams of discrimination upon being confronted