"Call us back when something happens," is not the response you want to hear from law enforcement when a potential workplace violence situation threatens. If your company has a workplace violence policy, established action plans and has trained its employees all without any contact with local law enforcement, then your company isn’t truly prepared. By not contacting your local law enforcement you cannot know what your local police or sheriff’s department will say, do, or refuse to do, should the early warnings of a potential workplace violence event arise.

If your company has no policy, plans or training, then this relationship moves from very important to critical. When it comes to violence prevention, how does a company approach the police or sheriff’s department? Will they even be receptive to formation of a workplace violence collaboration or partnership designed to prevent rather than just react?

Recently a workplace violence prevention training session was held for the FBI Law Enforcement Executive Development Seminar. Over 100 chiefs of police and their senior command officers representing police departments and sheriff’s offices from all over New England were in attendance. The awareness and prevention training opened by presenting law enforcement officials with a written workplace violence scenario and asking them to indicate how they believed their agency would respond. To encourage candid responses, the survey to the chiefs, sheriffs and commanders was anonymous.

The Situation

The following request is received by your police department:

Hi, I’m Judy from the Acme Widget Company on the west side of town. We need some help because we’re very nervous about one of our coworkers. He’s acting stranger than usual and the people in our group asked me to call and see if you can help us.

He’s at lunch now in the other room and he’s all dressed up in military camouflage army type clothing. He’s listening to "Apocalypse Now" blaring on the radio. He’s sharpening some kind of big knife and reading Soldier of Fortune magazine. One of my group asked him to turn down the radio and he said "I’m on my lunch hour, I can do whatever I want, get away from me or you’ll be sorry."

Can you help us, we’re afraid of him. Our supervisor won’t go near him and seems afraid of him too?

The Question

How will your department respond to this information?

The Choices

Law enforcement executives were given four choices and were told to select the option indicating their agency’s most likely response to the example situation:

  1. Call us back when something happens. No crime – no local law enforcement interest.
  2. Listen to all of the facts and try to provide referral to local aid agency (i.e., veterans’ services, employee assistance services, but it’s not a police problem).
  3. Send an officer to interview the complainant.
  4. Send an officer to interview complainant, (ID specifics are provided) interview subject of complaint, complete report.

The Discussion

This fictitious case analysis created a robust debate concerning strategies of effective risk assessment, threat management and permissible information sharing between stakeholders within the environment of workplace violence prevention.

The attendees were apprised of a monograph released on March 1, 2004, by the Federal Bureau of Investigation entitled: "Workplace Violence – Issues in Response," Critical Incident Response Group, National Center for the Assessment of Violent Crime, FBI Academy, Quantico, VA (copies of the monograph can be downloaded in .pdf format from the FBI website at www.fbi.gov).

The workplace violence monograph is the product of a week-long FBI National Symposium on Workplace Violence held in 2002. The symposium involved 150 experts and professionals from medicine, mental health, major corporations, human resource managers, attorneys, corporate security, military, law enforcement and the federal government. The monograph addresses the issue of information sharing and the divergent concerns between any company and their law enforcement provider:

"A company’s management may fear it will lose decision making control once law enforcement is involved. It may not want the public attention that can come with police involvement and may feel the company’s image will be damaged if its name is connected to a publicized criminal investigation. It may also be concerned about potential civil liability questions, confidentiality issues, or disclosing proprietary information to police. Similarly, police may have information that they cannot share with employers or private security agencies, such as criminal records, firearms records and past reports of criminal behavior."

Can the legal thicket stifle a desire to achieve workplace violence prevention, collaboration and partnership building with local law enforcement? Yes, but don’t let it. It is difficult to be sure, however, as the monograph cited above succinctly states:

"None of these concerns need hinder appropriate cooperation, but where they exist it is far better for all sides to recognize and clarify them as part of the violence prevention planning process, rather than leave them unspoken and unresolved until a conflict arises."

So how do we begin to draft or improve upon existing workplace violence prevention plans? There is one immutable fact in the corporate-law enforcement relationship, you cannot shop around. You cannot choose your law enforcement provider. It is a function of government, local, county or state and is unchangeable. Wherever your company is located and all its branch locations across America, each location has only one primary law enforcement provider. So how do we plan to prevent violence with so many potential jurisdictional differences?

The answer is communication. Recognize your jurisdiction’s strengths and weaknesses, current statutes and limitations and factor them into your planning process. Contact local law enforcement and ask if they’re interested in workplace violence prevention and assisting you in formulating plans. If your inquiry is met with disinterest or "it’s not our job, hire private security" then you have learned disappointing, yet valuable information. It is best to call local law enforcement with ten digits, not three. In other words, if you wait until a workplace situation requires a 911 call you have lost the opportunity for early intervention, which holds the promise of reducing the severity of violence and victimization.

"Workplace Violence – Issues in Response" provides a seven point approach for building police corporate partnerships using a community policing model:

1) Training for police on workplace violence issues and responses.

2) An outreach and awareness effort by police agencies directed at employers in their jurisdictions, encouraging them to work with police in preparing violence prevention plans and informing them that advice and assistance are available.

3) Compiling and establishing contact with a list of other public and private agencies (training, mental health, social services, etc.) that may help in violence prevention planning or incident response.

4) Initial meetings with individual employers providing them with:
    • contact information;
    • basic knowledge of relevant legal issues; and
    • procedures for reporting threats or violent incidents.

5) Establishing guidelines for exchange of information between police and employers (for example, if an employer seeks background information on a job applicant or present employee).

6) Developing procedures for particular risk situations such as layoff announcements for termination of a potentially dangerous employee.

7) Site reviews, in order to suggest safety improvements and develop plans for early response.

The Results

The results from surveying police executives in workplace violence prevention training were encouraging. Completion of the response scenario was voluntary, anonymous and participants were asked the size of their police agency and city/town population in the survey.

There were 106 police executives attending. Responses were returned by 92, yielding a group participation rate of 86.8%.

Individual executive choices as to how they believed their departments would respond were:

1. "Call us back when something happens."

2*

2. Referral to another agency or group.

1

3. Respond to interview complainant .

24

4. Respond – interview complainant & suspect.

65

* Note: Two agencies selecting this response were among the largest jurisdictions.

 

The good news indicating that 70% of the police executives treated this situation as serious enough to respond and investigate must be tempered by the audience itself. Respondents were police executives so dedicated to violence prevention that they made the time in their busy schedules to attend the seminar. What would be the response of police chiefs and sheriffs in the other estimated 12,500+ law enforcement agencies across the United States?

Business Application

A reverse use of the facts presented allows business operators to ask crucial planning questions. Keep the scenario the same and switch the audience from law enforcement executives to your executives or employees and ask the following questions:

  • Faced with the same facts would you contact law enforcement?
  • Would company policy prohibit you from calling?
  • How do you anticipate your police/sheriff’s department would respond, if at all?
  • If your police/sheriff’s department doesn’t respond, what do you do next to protect yourself and your coworkers?

Opening and maintaining a dialogue with law enforcement is the responsibility of both major stakeholders in awareness and early prevention of workplace violence. Both business and law enforcement have legitimate concerns on privacy, budgetary limitations and other issues, but they cannot be appreciated in isolation. Communication through understanding and effective violence prevention strategies can only be achieved if they reach out to each other before a critical situation confronts them.

Stephen Doherty is CEO of Doherty Partners LLC, a private workplace violence consulting firm. He retired as Chief of Police in Wakefield (MA) after thirty three years service.

©Doherty Partners LLC 2004 All Rights reserved

The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.