Seminar on safety targets violence at work, school
By Samantha Maziarz Christmann NEWS BUSINESS REPORTER
Updated: 05/03/08 7:12 AM
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- The safety seminar seeks to prevent incidents such as Seung Hui Cho’s April 2007 shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, in which he killed 33 people, including himself.
An estimated 2 million Americans will be affected by workplace violence this year, according to the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration. What is even more tragic, according to a local non-profit chapter of safety professionals, is the fact that many of these incidences could be prevented with proper training and awareness.
On Thursday, the Niagara Frontier chapter of the American Society of Safety Engineers helped get the word out by hosting “The Psychology of Violence Prevention,” a seminar aimed at helping citizens identify and prevent violent outbreaks at work, school and in the community.
“We all read the news and look at what’s going on in society,” said Tom Weisbeck, a certified safety professional and member of the society. “We need to recognize there are potentially violent people out there, and we need to take steps to intervene and short circuit that behavior before someone goes postal.”
The seminar addressed the psychology of violent behavior, how to identify and evaluate threats and hazards contributing to that conduct, and strategies and programs could be put into place to prevent dangerous outbursts.
The seminar emphasized the “five D’s of violence prevention”:
• Citizens must stop “denying” there is a possibility of violence in the workplace
• They must “deter” attackers from choosing their workplace as a target — perhaps with armed guards
• They must “detect” the worst thing that could happen and then prepare for it
• And they they must “delay” an attacker’s effectiveness by having a practiced system in which workers lock themselves away from danger and call police.
• In taking these steps, citizens can hope to “defeat” violent attackers.
The seminar covered a range of situations, from the isolated attacks of one co-worker assaulting another to large-scale violence, such as the widely publicized school and workplace shootings that have taken place around the country.
Also discussed was the role of media in violence, and whether the widespread publicity given to attackers in workplaces and schools makes others like them more likely to strike.
About 100 human resource personnel, school administrators, police officers and safety professionals attended the event at the Hilton Garden Inn in Cheektowaga.
“We can’t predict what will happen, and we need to be prepared for the worst,” said Mary Carol Dearing, a school social worker in the Williamsville Central School District and a member of the building crisis team at Country Parkway Elementary School. “I’m hoping to take some new strategies back to school with me.”
Lt. Col. (Ret.) David Grossman, who administered the seminar, is the founder and director of Killology Research Group, a consulting firm which examines the psychological causes and effects of violent human aggression. Grossman, a former U. S. Army Ranger, has trained special operations forces around the world, including for the FBI and the CIA, as well as such corporate security teams as those at Walt Disney Co. and Wal-Mart Stores.
“We teach people what to do when a fire happens, and now I’m afraid we have to teach them what to do when violence happens,” said Grossman. “[Aggressors] will come for the weakest link, and we can’t make ourselves soft targets.”
