In the first part of this three-part podcast series, Karen Tynan, a shareholder in the firm's Sacramento office and co-chair of the Workplace Violence Prevention Practice Group, joins workplace violence mitigation consultant Dan Skoczylas to discuss the FBI's 2024 report on "Active Shooter Incidents in the United States." Karen and Dan examine the data presented in the report but emphasize the importance of going beyond statistics to assess and mitigate risk. They explore the report's nuances, including response times, the categorization of incidents, and the practical implications for businesses aiming to enhance their workplace safety protocols.
Transcript
Announcer: Welcome to the Ogletree Deakins podcast, where we provide listeners with brief discussions about important workplace legal issues. Our podcasts are for informational purposes only and should not be construed as legal advice. You can subscribe through your favorite podcast service. Please consider rating this podcast so we can get your feedback and improve our programs. Please enjoy the podcast.
Karen Tynan: Thank you for joining us for the Ogletree Deakins
podcast. My name is Karen Tynan, and I'm a shareholder in the
Sacramento, California, office and co-chair of the Workplace
Violence Prevention Practice Group here at the firm. Here with me
today is Dan Skoczylas, and he is a subject matter expert in
workplace violence and active shooters. We're talking about the
FBI's report on 2024 active shooter incidents. This is an
important topic for employers looking to address workplace violence
hazards and understand active shooter risk. This podcast is part
one in a series of podcasts here at Ogletree Deakins.
So, first and foremost, Dan, let's talk a bit about our
backgrounds. I want to set the stage for this podcast. So, can you
go first and tell us about your background and how you became a
real subject matter expert in this?
Dan Skoczylas: Absolutely. First, thanks for having me, Karen. I
appreciate being invited to talk to you about this over the course
of a couple of segments, I believe, that we're going to be
doing here.
So, I am from Illinois. I was in law enforcement for 24 years in a
suburb that is outside the city of Chicago. And as a police
officer, I held a number of different roles. I did the first
several years of my career as a patrolman. From there, I was
assigned to develop the agency's first tactical gang crimes
unit. From there, I moved into a position as a task force officer
with the United States Customs Service, which is now what is HSI
basically today. Did a few years there. Detective, sergeant, and I
retired as a lieutenant. So, I guess that officially makes me
Lieutenant Dan if you want to really push it.
So, during my time doing that, I spent a number of years on the
high-risk entry team, our capacity of SWAT, if you will, working on
things like entries and school shooting situations, and did a lot
of training in those respects. And ultimately, during that time, we
recognized that we were training ourselves, but we weren't
really doing the public that we served any justice. Most of them
were uninterested in participating at best, and when they did
participate, it became glaringly obvious that we were not going to
be really helping them in a situation like this, which got me to
thinking of how could I actually help these folks and what could I
do.
Karen Tynan: I love that.
Dan Skoczylas: From there on, it was kind of a mission of mine in life to figure out a better way. So that brings us to where we are today.
Karen Tynan: That's a great story, and of course, I'm
going to call you Lieutenant Dan from now on. And I'm just a
humble workplace safety attorney who kind of came to workplace
violence prevention from the lens of workplace safety but really
started to get involved when SB 553 in California was passed and
the lead-up to the bill passing, testified in Sacramento in front
of committees, worked with the Chamber of Commerce, and really
started before the law was even enacted. And as these laws and
regulations on workplace violence prevention are becoming enacted
in other states, it's created quite a bit of momentum around
this area of expertise. And I will share that you and I met and
became kindred spirits over this subject matter, kind of workplace
violence prevention nerds, and we decided to record this podcast
when the FBI report on 2024 active shooter incidents was
published.
That publication was June 2025, and it has caused people to ask
questions. Employers, folks, want to understand what this report
means. And I think it's important to talk about the report
before you and I dive into discussing active shooter threats,
training, and other aspects. And, for you as this person with so
much law enforcement and training expertise, I want to ask you
first, can you give us this high-level overview of what the report
is and also what the report isn't? We are lay persons, we are
not law enforcement, and we're reading this FBI report on
active shooter incidents in the United States in 2024. Tell us the
high-level overview and what the report is and what it
isn't.
Dan Skoczylas: Absolutely, and I get these reports every year,
and I try to pore through them. The heartburn that I have with
these reports, when you're trying to make decisions about your
business or safety practices or policy practice and procedure and
you're using statistics to guide those decisions or give you
some guidance with regard to how you should react to it, the
statistics tend to paint a poor picture of what the problem
actually is, the magnitude of the problem, whether it's
actually improved or gotten worse because the statistics are really
biased based on who is compiling them.
The FBI, we all know that they've had some issues over the
course of the last several years, but if you look at the report,
they go into great detail to document everything from the gender of
the shooter, the time of day, the day of week, all of those things.
And in reality, clients like yours, Karen, and clients like mine
that are looking for solutions to this don't necessarily care
what day of the week this is going to happen. They want to know how
do I prevent getting killed and what do I do when bullets are
whizzing over my head?
I understand the need to compile this data and to look at it, but
let's consider as well that the FBI is a federal law
enforcement agency and they are certainly going to, let's say,
skew these statistics to put themselves in the best light and
create a situation where it calms public perception of how bad this
problem actually is. Simply changing the definition of what an
active shooter is would completely change this report. The
data's important. I just don't know how imperative it is to
a client of yours or mine that is trying to come up with a solution
to mitigate this problem. They want to know what's going to
work for them, not what the FBI defines an active shooter as on
that given day.
Karen Tynan: I like that perspective. And if a layperson is reading the report, whatever it is, 20-something, 50-something pages, you could look at the executive summary and say, "Well, June has the highest number of incidents. The highest day of the week for incidents is Monday, and incidents were most likely to occur in the morning between 6:00 a.m. and noon. So never go to work in June on Monday morning." You know what I mean?
Dan Skoczylas: Right.
Karen Tynan: Sometimes the data, it can be helpful and then in
other ways it doesn't really get you to a solution. So, I like
how you word that.
Now, right off the bat, the FBI indicates that the 2024 data shows
a decrease in active shooter incidents from 2023, a decrease by
50%. And so, I could see employers saying, "Oh, well, our
risks are going down by half. Good grief. Do we really need to
address this? Is this a realistic probability or a realistic
possibility?" What do you think of the premise, based on this
data, that in 2024, the active shooter incidents were down 50%?
Dan Skoczylas: Again, I believe that this has a lot to do with
the FBI tweaking their definition of what an active shooter is.
I'm very near the city of Chicago, and it is not unusual, for
example, during the month of July, for the city of Chicago on any
given Saturday night to have 70 to 80 shootings or people shot in
the city. Based on the FBI's definition of what an active
shooter is, none of those qualify for these statistics, yet my
guess would be if you ask the family members of any of those
deceased folks who were victims of those shootings if that was an
active shooter event, they would tell you absolutely. And if it had
occurred in a place of business, whether it qualified as an active
shooter event based on the definition or not, the owner of the
company or the business still has the same problems. I have a dead
individual on my manufacturing floor. The definition of what this
is doesn't make any difference. How did this happen? What do I
do, and how can I prevent it from happening again?
So the statistics are all based on the definition of the day, which
tends to change from year to year.
Karen Tynan: And we'll get to that at the end of the 2024
report, there's a five-year synopsis that actually shows
it's not necessarily a trend that shootings are going down. It
actually doesn't show that, "Oh, we could expect in 2026
it to be half again," right? So, I like how you point out that
looking at the data doesn't necessarily give you a complete
picture. It can give you information.
Now, one thing I found interesting is that the FBI does not
distinguish between types of workplaces, although it has this
category called commerce, and it has a separate category for houses
of worship, government, and schools, but you can have employees in
a house of worship. You have employees at schools, and you have
employees at government locations. I know there's even an
incident in the synopsis where a park ranger was shot, but
that's categorized as an open space incident. I would
categorize that as workplace violence happening in this
person's workplace, even though it was, quote-unquote,
"outdoors."
So I think that when people look at this data and the categories,
and you see, "Oh, commerce, it's about maybe a third of
the incidents, maybe a little less," that that shouldn't
necessarily mean that because of the category of commerce, you feel
like you have a decreased risk. So, I wanted to ask you about these
categories and understanding risk, let's say what they call
commerce or a place of business, compared to a government building
or an outdoor space. Talk a little bit about those categories
because the categories did not seem intuitive to me. They felt like
kind of a square peg in a round hole. I had a hard time following
the category analysis.
Dan Skoczylas: I'm glad that you brought this up. It's interesting to me. And I agree with you. If you have an active shooting event, even by the definition that the FBI is providing for the day, if you have an event that qualifies as an active shooter at a kid's soccer field at a park district, somebody works there.
Karen Tynan: Yes.
Dan Skoczylas: It is somebody's place of business. I would argue that there's no need to really break it out into these different categories. For our purposes, for mine and yours, Karen, they are all workplace incidents, all of them. Somebody works there. Whether it's a church, a school, a park district, or the guy who runs the riding lawnmower at the football field, he works there. That's his job. So, I'm not sure why they go to great lengths to break this down but, again, the only argument that I can make or see on their end is that, well, it softens the blow when we say, "Well, only 53% of these happened in a place of commerce." But truth be told, a hundred percent of them happened in the workplace.
Karen Tynan: Yes, I agree with you on that. And the other part I
noticed in the report is it says, "A firearm-related incident
may be excluded if it involves," and it gives kind of a list.
Well, domestic disputes, we know that domestic disputes that carry
over from the home into the workplace are incredibly common.
That's why we have temporary restraining orders that we get
when there's partner violence. And so I thought it was
interesting that that's excluded, and I think probably skews
the data about what is happening in the workplace. And this again
is on page two of the report, and it's kind of the caveats, the
little almost footnotes. And also, shootings in relation to another
criminal act, well, is that a robbery? Because the person working
retail who has a gun in their face, they think it's workplace
violence. And if there's a bullet that comes out of the gun,
they think that's an active shooter.
And so, I do think it's important, the way you're
explaining it, that the categories have definitions, and the
definitions don't always give us a complete picture. Am I
saying it in a way that you agree with, or do you think there's
another nuance to explain?
Dan Skoczylas: No, you are absolutely correct. And when
you're talking about these stats and the analysis, one that I
highlighted in the report, because I always scratch my head and
think, because it's a perfect example of how they can throw out
a statistic that puts people at ease, and yet it's so
inaccurate.
According to this report, the average response time for law
enforcement to an active shooter event is one minute and 48
seconds. I would argue that is absolutely ridiculous. First of all,
if it's inside a building, law enforcement isn't even going
to know that it's going on until somebody has the wherewithal
to call 911. And let's not forget, everybody in there at this
moment is dodging gunfire. So, picking up a phone is not first and
foremost on their mind. Second, it's got to go to the dispatch
center. It's got to go from the dispatch center out to the
squad car. From the squad car, that may be 10, 15 minutes away. In
reality, we all know, based on the reports in the aftermath of
these events, the police typically don't get there until the
whole thing's over and done with.
Karen Tynan: Exactly. And you didn't know this before this
podcast, but my sister, Melanie, on the weekends is a 911
dispatcher. So, I hear a lot of stories, and she shares with me
dispatching people, how long things take. I agree with you.
It's logical to think about the time between someone who hides
under their desk, calls 911, dispatch, the vehicle getting there,
people getting staged, and all that. I think that statistic is a
bit misleading, too. And I think if businesses looked at that, they
think, "Well," as we would say in the south, "The
police are going to get there pretty fast." So it gives that
false sense of security, that false sense that they may not have to
do as much as maybe you or I would envision.
So let's talk some more about the data. Now, I'm definitely
not a psychologist, behavioralist, or any of that. In this report,
the vast majority of the perpetrators of the incidents described in
the 2024 active shooter incident report are male. Now, is this
consistent with your experience with active shooters? Do you think
this is skewed? Tell me about your experience and what you think of
that conclusion. I think in the incidents for 2024, they say there
are 25 shooters, 22 are male, and three are female.
Dan Skoczylas: It does seem to be that the majority of the offenders in these incidents are males. However, that being said, the first one that comes to my mind that I can recall was a female. So, you take all of those things into account, and ultimately it's just another one of those statistics where it doesn't really make much difference. You're going to react to the threat and the action, not the individual. So whoever's got their finger on the trigger, it doesn't really make any difference. It's just another one of those stats that people go, "Well, everybody that works here is a female, so we don't have to worry about this." And if they would use that rationale, I don't know. But again, it doesn't help the situation.
Karen Tynan: Right. I think it's a statistic, but we can't really use it to manage the risk or use it to come to quick conclusions. And there's also in the report an indication that, in situations at businesses, either handguns or a shotgun is used for these shootings. And I think it even dives down into how many handguns and who used a shotgun, but handgun laws vary, say, state to state. What do you see, or what have you seen over your career? What do you see people doing now in 2025 regarding preventing handguns in the workplace or addressing the risk of handguns in the workplace?
Dan Skoczylas: So, in my state in Illinois, they have these, and
I can't imagine it's much different in other states. In
fact, I know that they have similar laws in Colorado and whatnot.
They stick these stickers on the door that say, "No guns
allowed here. This is a gun-free zone," which simply announces
to the would-be shooter that they're going to encounter less
resistance at that particular establishment.
We get this question a lot, everything from should we prohibit guns
in our workspace to should we allow and encourage people who are
trained and licensed concealed carry holders to bring guns into the
workplace? And I always defer those folks right back to their legal
counsel to get those questions answered because there's a lot
to digest there. There's a lot of room for liability exposure
and whatnot. So, you have to be really careful with that.
What I do tell them is no matter what sign you have on the door,
and no matter what your policy, practice or procedure is, they are
going to circumvent it. I guarantee you that there are guns in your
establishment. If given an opportunity, I would go find them for
you. But they are here. Everything that we do as far as mitigating
workplace violence, let's just go with the assumption that they
are present and then deal with it from there.
Karen Tynan: Right, that somehow, some way, if someone wants to
bring a handgun or a shotgun into the workplace, they'll most
likely be able to do it. And I do think you're absolutely right
about every state, the handgun laws vary. And in some states,
employers can have policies that apply in the parking lot, others,
maybe, not so much. And it does become kind of a trickier area for
having those policies. And I do see it has come to the forefront, I
would say in 2024, 2025, where employers are asking what kind of
policy should I have? What kind of enforcement should I have? If
you're going to have a policy that says absolutely no guns in
the workplace, have you asked yourself if you're going to
search lockers? Are you going to search cars? What if someone comes
and tells you, "Hey, I've got my hunting rifle in the
truck because I'm going to go hunting this weekend straight
from here," is that violating your policy?
So I think you're right. It can be a bit of a complex question,
and there's no answer in our dialogue here, but I do like
pointing it out for employers to consider, "Hey, what is our
policy? Do we need a policy? Should we have a policy? What is going
to be compliant with both state and local laws? And how will this
play out consistent with our company culture, or how we talk about
safety in the workplace, how we address workplace violence?"
So, I really like your thoughts on that.
Now, this completes part one, so we'll close out here and say
thanks for listening to Karen and Dan today. Again, this is part
one in our three-part series. And look for Ogletree blog articles
on workplace violence. You can check out our practice page and also
our practice group on workplace violence prevention, and also our
webinars. So, thanks for listening and stay safe out there and get
ready to listen to part two.
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