Workplace Violence issue still ongoing…

This issue began in 2001. I revisited and wrote an article in 2005. It was reposted in 2008 and now in 2012 is still relevant. Here is a prime example of how something minor can become a major issue… 

Workplace violence still continues to be one of the most significant threats in the business world. It doesn't seem to matter what the business does or where it is located, there can be a threat of violence associated with it. There are many faces of workplace violence and the key is to understand that a threat can come from anywhere. It can be a distraught employee who is being harassed by co-workers in the workplace or is disciplined or terminated. It can be a spillover from a domestic issue, even from a chance encounter.

We will be discussing the issues of stalking in the workplace and how a simple, normal encounter can become a dangerous threat. In the Unites States one out of every 20 women will be stalked in their lifetime. Stalking can start as a simple nuisance but it can escalate into a serious workplace violence threat.

A recent study by the National Institute of Justice found that stalking was far more prevalent than many had thought: eight percent of American women and two percent of American men will be stalked sometime within their lifetime. That's 1.4 million American stalking victims every year. The majority of stalkers have been in relationships with their victims, but a significant percentage either have never met their victims, or it started from a simple meeting with a neighbor, friend or someone met on or off the job. Even if it started off the job, it can impact on the workplace if the threat moves to the workplace location so the employee and other workers are threatened.

When it comes to workplace violence there is no one solution or response. Each incident is unique and should be dealt with properly and promptly.

Several years ago we had an opportunity to assist a large company with a workplace violence issue that had started from a chance encounter between two people who never met before. Because this was a good example of a stalking incident turning into workplace violence, we want to share that situation with you.

It started on a marketing campaign that took one of the owner's daughters, whom we will call Kim, to another state. The daughter had met a man during a one of her father's marketing meetings. She had been sitting in on the meetings in order to learn her father's business so she could eventually take over leadership of the company in the future. During the meeting she met a young man whom we will call Dan. He was a very charming and outgoing fellow and he and the daughter exchanged telephone numbers and then went their separate ways. Over the course of the next year, the two talked on the telephone and began to write each other.

The communications were normal in the beginning, but one day Dan had become agitated and threatened to come over and take care of Kim because she did not seem to value their relationship. Kim responded by asking Dan to not call or communicate with her anymore. But, after a few months, Kim began to again get telephone calls and letters. At first the letters were apologetic. After that, they began to become romantic and sexual in nature. Kim chose to simply ignore the letters. The letters increased in frequency and she then advised some of her associates within the company. They told her to ignore the issue and assured her Dan would tire of being ignored and would stop sooner or later. As time went on the letters slowed down but occasionally she would still receive a letter or telephone call.

As time went on Kim had realized she had a problem because some of the letters were very suggestive. They would detail fantasies of sexual encounters. Dan continued as if he was in a relationship with Kim and kept asking for an opportunity to see Kim. Kim decided to have all her mail and phone calls screened.

This went on for several years and Kim had tried to simply ignore the problem. She moved on with her life, married and began life with her new husband. She also took over her father's company. But the letters continued. Over time, Dan changed the content of his letters from physical attraction to saying that he was the son of her father (hence, Kim's half-sister). It became clear that there was a problem when Dan tried to contact Kim and showed up at the company headquarters, maintaining he was a part owner. Fortunately, security denied him access.

Kim and the company did not know what to do at this time so they contacted our consulting and investigation firm. We began with a thorough fact-finding. After all the information was gathered and interviews were completed, we recommended that some of the latest letters be sent for analysis by a psychological profile expert. Because we had Dan's name and address, the company authorized a full background investigation to confirm where Dan lived. During the background, an investigator was sent to the most recent known address to obtain an updated photo and clarify Dan's current situation. As the investigation progressed, Kim received a call from a young lady who identified herself as Dan's girlfriend. She said that Dan was seeking professional mental health help but had suddenly stopped taking his medication. She also said that Dan was getting ready to take a trip and he would be traveling to the city/state where the company's main office was located. She then explained that Dan was acting very distraught and violent.

The consultants put surveillance on Dan to keep track of him. The consultants also dispatched two teams to the company headquarters location, which was in another state. One team was a surveillance team and the other was an armed protection team. The surveillance team was to keep track of Dan once he entered the state where the headquarters was located. The surveillance team at his home advised that Dan had boarded a bus and was bound for a city near the company headquarters location. Because of licensing/jurisdiction issues, we could not place an investigator on the bus. Instead we posted teams at several different bus terminals and a protection team was sent to be with Kim and her family.

After several days of no contact with Dan we had received a phone call from Dan's girlfriend saying he was back at his home and he was not sharing with here where he had been. We continued to surval Dan at his home. Since we had a person on the inside that was feeding us information, and we had surveillance to confirm actions, we stopped coverage at the company headquarters location and stood down teams there.

At that time we received more letters and forwarded them for analysis. We also got the assessment from the psychologist. He explained that we were dealing with a delusional stalker. According to the expert, this kind of stalker almost always came from a background which was either emotionally barren or severely abusive. The expert said, "These individuals grow up having a very poor sense of their own identities". This, coupled with a predisposition toward psychosis, leads them to strive for satisfaction through another. They yearn to "merge" with someone who is almost always perceived to be of a higher status (e.g. doctors, lawyers, and teachers) or is very socially desirable (e.g. celebrities). It is as if this stalker says, "Gee. If she loves me, I must not be so bad." As Dean Martin compellingly crooned with what could be considered the delusional stalker's anthem: "You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You." It is not unusual for this type of stalker to "hear" the soothing voice of his victim, or believe that the victim is sending him or her cryptic messages through others.

According to the expert, delusional stalkers frequently have had little, if any, contact with their victims. They may have major mental illnesses like schizophrenia, manic-depression or erotomania. What they all have in common is some false belief that keeps them tied to their victims. In erotomania, the stalker's delusional belief is that the victim loves him. This type of stalker actually believes that he is having a relationship with his victim, even though they might never have met. The woman stalking David Letterman, the stalker who killed actress Rebecca Schaeffer and the man who stalked Madonna are all examples of erotomanic stalkers.

Another type of delusional stalker might believe that he is destined to be with someone, and that if he only pursues her hard enough and long enough, she will come to love him as he loves her. These stalkers know they are not having a relationship with their victims, but firmly believe that they will someday. John Hinckley Jr.'s obsession with Jodi Foster is an example of this type of stalker.

Or he can become a vengeful stalker. These stalkers become angry with their victims over some slight, real or imagined. Politicians, for example, get many of these types of stalkers who become angry over some piece of legislation or program the official sponsors. But, disgruntled ex-employees can also stalk, whether targeting their former bosses, co-workers or the entire company. Some of these angry stalkers are psychopaths, i.e. people without conscience or remorse. Some are delusional, (most often paranoid), and believe that they, in fact, are the victims. They all stalk to "get even."

In our example case, the letters continued to talk about how he would get what was rightfully his, Dan also wrote about getting her (his claimed) father back for abandoning him and he would get even with the family. Using the analyses and other information gathered we began to coordinate with law enforcement where Dan lived. Local law enforcement, in turn, consulted with several mental health organization and other professionals in order to come up with a course of action. Law enforcement assisted in obtaining a restraining order in his home state and we were also able to obtain a restraining order in the state where the corporate headquarters was located. Dan was ultimately approached by law enforcement in his home community, served and they explained to Dan that he was not allowed within ten thousand yards of the company locations and family members. After the meeting with law enforcement, his girlfriend said Dan had become very angry and violent. The girlfriend said he told her he was going to take a trip again and would claim his rightful inheritance. The girlfriend said would not be able to help us anymore because she feared for her life and was leaving Dan.

Once again we dispatched a surveillance team to Dan's home and also reactivated the surveillance and protection team back in the state where the company headquarters was located. The surveillance team in Dan's home location followed Dan in order to give the teams advanced notice on Dan's actions, especially if it appeared he was, indeed, going to attempt to go to the company location.

Within a day, we received word from the surveillance team that Dan had boarded a bus. All teams went on high alert. One team was at the bus terminal and followed Dan when he arrived at a nearby city bus terminal. After several days, Dan rented a car and the surveillance team said he was enroute to the city where the company was located. Our surveillance team followed Dan as he attempted to contact Kim and her father. Dan was observed violating the restraining order when he was parked across the street from the family home. Even though he did not exit the car, he had violated the order and local law enforcement was contacted. Our surveillance team directed the police to Dan's location. He was arrested and was mentally evaluated. He was ultimately released and we again survaled Dan as he got on a bus and left the state. Surveillance teams picked him up two days later, arriving home. With all the evidence we had collected, we had enough to have Dan picked up by local law enforcement and have him committed to a mental health facility where he would be treated. Even after release, he was compelled to stay on his medication and was monitored.

This story had a happy ending because the company had a plan, took responsible action and worked with private consultants and law enforcement.

It goes without saying that not all cases have this type of ending. Rebecca Schaeffer and other workplace deaths are proof that failure to act can have tragic consequences. A few years later, the senior management at a distribution center refused our recommendations on developing a workplace violence prevention plan. Within a year, three workers were killed in a tragic shootout at the site.

The sad thing is that many companies have these types of issues but they choose to ignore them, usually because they do not have the background and experience to make good decisions. Almost every week we hear a manager of some company complain that they just don't know what to do in a potential workplace violence matter. We will ask: What does your company plan and training say? Most of the time, they say: We don't have a plan and I've never been trained on this.

Workplace Violence has to do with any kind of violence, or threat of violence, in the workplace. The workplace violence threat should be addressed by advanced training and planning. The planning should be based on what we term a Workplace Violence Planning and Response Plan. There should be training provided with the plan. Management should be responsible for coordinating an approach, in accordance with local laws, for locations within their areas of responsibility.

The local management should use a Threat Assessment and Management (SECTAM) or similar approach. That team will be chartered with the identification, intervention and mitigation of physical threats to people and your company's facilities wherever they are located.

Managers, with the assistance of the SECTAM approach, may become involved in matters such as assault, sabotage, fighting, terminations/hostile meetings, bomb threats, domestic violence, extortion, kidnapping, missing employees, physical harassment, stalking, suicide, terrorism and other significant threat matters.

Our approach recommends using a three-tier system to consider risk factors in workplace violence situations

Tier 1: Low violence potential (e.g. an anonymous, unfriendly email from an external origin; court protection order notification; security assistance for a possibly hostile meeting).

Tier 2: Medium violence potential (e.g. some physical intimidation and/or verbal threats has occurred).

Tier 3: High violence potential (e.g. urgent/immediate response required for intervention when an actual assault has occurred, hostile actions have been carried out or are in progress. If there has been a combination of threatening actions, including specific threats, long-standing harassment or stalking, or an actual assault).

Almost every company we talk with says their most valuable resource is their people. Unfortunately for a lot of companies that is just rhetoric because they ignore issues like workplace violence.

It also should be noted the subject is still a ward of the state and was denied release twice…

“Resilience”

The January 2012 article in ASIS International’s Security Management magazine has an interview with Dr. Stephen Flynn,  who is a major “think tank” guy and professor at Northeastern University in Boston.  Here’s one of his answers:

The Obama administration has not changed far enough. They’re tilting in the right direction, but I think more movement needs to happen more quickly.  To the credit of the administration, they’ve embraced the concept of resilience  - a public acknowledgement that every act of terror cannot be prevented and some capacity to respond and recover from them is necessary.  That’s difficult for political leadership to say, but the president and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano have said it, and that’s a necessary dose of reality.  The Obama administration has also gone a bit further than the Bush administration with the all-hazards recognition of the importance of what FEMA’s Craig Fugate calls the “whole community approach.”  I give them credit for recognizing that homeland security needs to expand beyond a narrow focus on terrorism risks to include the broader issues of all hazards and that there needs to be a greater degree of outreach and engagement of communities.”

Couple that with the latest issue of Inside Home land Security (Winter 2011) issue in which Dr. Dave McIntyre, VP for Academic Affairs at the National Graduate School and Visiting Fellow at both the Homeland Security Institute and WMD Center, wrote in his article: Reducing the Risk of Risk Management.  He said:

The traditional approach sees risk as a product of an attacker’s intent, the vulnerability of a target and the consequences of a successful attack.  In forecasting the risk of a natural hazard, likelihood of a disaster may be substituted for an attacker’s intent and capability.  Whatever system of calculation is adopted, someone (or some team) must place numerical values on each aspect of the calculation and then adjust the weight of factors for qualitative differences.  For example, if the calculation of risk to a warehouse and an elementary school turn out exactly the same, you might want to weigh the loss of children more heavily in terms of consequence, than the loss of materials (consequences).  Are Risk Management and management of risk the same?  Many experts say yes. But if Risk Management deals with cycles, processes and allocation of resources over time…then what do we call the day-to-day manipulation of available resources to meet threats?  Are police or security on patrol really risk managers?  Or are they managing the day-to-day risk?  Perhaps we need two different terms for these two different activities.

Remember our fallen friends and colleagues

Last year, January 2011, two security professionals lost their lives and here is the brief I sent out. I am reposting it for all of us to remember our fallen friends and colleagues.

Mexico Intelligence Brief January 2011

Over the last month there has been another escalation with regard to supply chain security issues. Unfortunately the ongoing battle on the borders has claimed the lives of two security professionals. These gentlemen have been attempting to create a safe haven system in Mexico. The idea was to identify several key routes leading to the Mexican and U.S. borders.  Once these routes were identified the next step was to then create a network of safe havens. The safe haven approach is similar to the secure parking areas used in Europe.  It was conceived to protect company drivers (mostly U.S.citizens) should the driver perceive he/she was in any danger. The safe haven was to be stocked with food and additional suppliers to support a driver for several days and allow enough time to enable a response, in the form of a security extraction team, to arrive. It also was to have sufficient space to discreetly hide a semi truck and trailer.

The company the individuals worked for has had several security incidents during this past year.  The result was that they lost several priority customer loads. Regretfully the company's security efforts were being thwarted by an insider...an employee that had been co-opted and working for the cartels for nearly a year.  This co-opted employee was responsible for route planning and dispatching drivers to pick up loads. Security had asked the “trusted” employee to develop a list of misinformation with regard to route plans to try and confuse the cartels.  The misinformation was purposely leaked to individuals that were known to have been working for the cartels.  Of course, this approach was not working because the cartels knew all the true details from the co-opted insider. Information that was being disseminated related to high value loads.

Belatedly, after the two security personnel were killed, the company realized there was an inside leak and that is why they had been suffering losses in spite of their countermeasure efforts. They conducted an investigation and identified the insider who had been providing information to the cartels.

During an interview, the employee finally confessed to working for the cartel but claimed that his family was under threat by the cartel. This was sibseqiemtly found to be untrue.  In fact, the co-opted employee's family is currently living in New York and works in a Catholic Church, operating a child day-care service for the parish. The family is fine and under no threat according to authorities at the Church.  Church authorities explained they had known the family for years and they never displayed any sense of fear or appeared to be threatened in any way. Because this happened in Mexico the employee has not been brought up on any formal charges and the local police have claimed they have no idea what to charge the employee with, even though he is clearly involved in theft and murder. Since the interview with company security, the employee has "disappeared."

Details of how the cartel was able to target the foreign security personnel is not clear but both bodies have been recovered.

Analysis

What lessons can we learn from this unfortunate incident.

First, it is important for security personnel operating in Mexico to understand that if they are threatening or impeding cartel operations, they are potentially subject to being killed.  Security personnel operating in Mexico must take precautions and practice all security measures commensurate with the risks.

It is unfortunate that the company did not realize there was an insider earlier.  As is often the case, too many of the high value thefts were viewed, incorrectly, as being "bad luck" on the part of the company.  It is important to thoroughly investigate each theft and incident.  A good investigation could have uncovered the insider and potentially prevented two deaths and multiple high value cargo losses.

In fact, the majority of thefts and incidents in Mexico involve "insiders” who provide details to the cartels to enable them to successfully carry out their operations.  As in this case, when caught, the drivers or other insiders who have betrayed the company will claim they were under duress.  While duress does occur, in the majority of cases there was no duress.  The primary motivation for their actions is, very simply, greed.  Company security personnel should know that the "duress" claim is one the cartels recommend and train their personnel to use if caught.  They have determined that Western companies are sympathetic and are too often willing to accept this excuse.

Additionally, it was worth noting that the Mexican police are either incapable of, or unwilling to, adequately respond to insider betrayal.  If the individual has an opportunity, they will "disappear" so it is important to take immediate action and not plan on subsequent interviews or contacts.

Finally, it was sadly interesting that the "safe haven" concept was one that the cartels felt had enough merit that the individuals responsible for setting it up were killed.

A threat to supply chains in Mexico still remains a major security issue.