novaBBS - alt.law-enforcement - Re: We're Seeing A Spike In Workplace Shootings. Here's Why

from
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/27/1000745927/why-were-seeing-a-spike-in-workplace-shootings

We're Seeing A Spike In Workplace Shootings. Here's Why
May 27, 20216:47 AM ET
Vanessa Romo

(I think it is more because the 'media' so publicizes each
of these events. 1. That keeps this type of act on the tops
of the mind of disturbed people. 2. That assures each
of them that they can get attention in this way (become
famous or well known for at least a short time).
3. And the 'media' seems lately to be constantly stroking
angers and unjustices.)

Law enforcement officers respond to a mass shooting at a Santa Clara
Valley Transportation Authority facility on Wednesday in San Jose,
Calif. A Santa Clara County sheriff's spokesman said the rail yard
shooting left multiple people, including the shooter, dead.
Noah Berger/AP
Workplace mass shootings are rare, but the killing of nine people by a
fellow employee at a Northern California rail yard on Wednesday marks
the third such rampage in under two months.

That could foreshadow a rise in this type of violence after the
nationwide shutdown of businesses resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic,
says Jaclyn Schildkraut, associate professor of criminal justice at the
State University of New York at Oswego.

However, Schildkraut stresses that while such shootings "are increasing
incrementally in frequency, they're still extremely statistically rare."

In San Jose on Wednesday, authorities say, a public transit employee
opened fire on co-workers at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation
Authority, fatally shooting at least nine people and then taking his own
life. The suspect was identified as a 57-year-old current employee. A
motive is still unknown.

The attack comes on the heels of a similar shooting in Indianapolis on
April 15 in which a former FedEx worker killed eight people before
killing himself. That was reported to be the deadliest workplace
massacre since a brewery employee gunned down five people at the Molson
Coors campus in Milwaukee in February 2020, shortly before the pandemic
shutdown.

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About a week before the Indiana shooting, a gunman killed one person and
wounded five others in an ambush at a cabinet manufacturing facility in
Bryan, Texas, where he worked. He survived and was arrested.

More people are returning to work

A database compiled by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern
University found that between 2006 and February 2020, there had been 13
mass workplace shootings carried out by a current or former employee —
roughly one a year on average.

"The reason they seem more frequent right now is because we haven't had
them really for the last year because of COVID," Schildkraut says. Such
restrictions have also served to limit opportunities for potential
shooters "because it reduces the available targets for a person," she says.

"Now that much of the country is returning to work, we're seeing an
uptick in these events in the sense that they're now out there because
people are back out there," she says.

Shooters may have had time to plan

Another reason we may see more workplace attacks is that potential
perpetrators, who've likely been in isolation over the past year, have
had time to plan, Schildkraut notes. "One of the things that we know
about shooters, especially those who target schools or other specific
public spaces, is that they don't usually wake up and snap."

There are as yet few details about the person who carried out the latest
shooting in San Jose. But Schildkraut says, "It's very unlikely that the
individual woke up this morning and said, 'It's Wednesday, I'm going to
go and commit a mass shooting.' "

At the very least, some planning goes into committing these acts of
violence, she says, "and so when we think about the pandemic and this
idea of opportunity, not only did we remove the opportunity for the
crime to occur, but we gave them more opportunity to plan."

There's been an overall rise in shootings

Although definitions vary by agency or organization, the independent
research group Gun Violence Archive reports there have been 15 mass
murders in 2021. But only the incidents already detailed were committed
by an existing or former employee in the workplace. A third assault in
an office park in Orange, Calif., involved a man who had a "business and
personal relationship" with many of the nine people he killed, but he
did not appear to have been directly affiliated with the company he
targeted.

The archive defines mass murder as any instance in which four or more
people are fatally shot in a single event, which is why it excludes the
Texas shooting where only one person was killed. And it differentiates
between mass murders and mass shootings, which it counts as when four or
more individuals are shot or killed in a single event. According to
those parameters, there have been 232 of those since the start of the year.

"It appears as if a tsunami of gun violence has hit parts of the
nation," Robert McCrie, deputy chair of the Department of Security, Fire
and Emergency Management at John Jay College of Criminal Justice said,
citing a national rise in shootings over the past year.

Like Schildkraut, McCrie — who has written about mass homicides in the
workplace — believes the spike we've been experiencing can be attributed
to the pandemic. "It has had a pervasive effect on behavior, releasing
inhibitions of fragile populations in ways that we have not seen before."

They follow a similar pattern

Workplace mass shootings often follow a similar pattern, according to
Seamus McGraw, author of From a Taller Tower: The Rise of the American
Mass Shooter.

These shooters use multiple weapons that they have often acquired only
shortly before a planned shooting, he says.

"They're usually acquired within the last couple of months as part of
the preparation for this sort of thing," McGraw says, adding that
similar behavior extends to nearly all mass shooters. "They either began
or accelerated their collection of weapons" when they started seriously
planning the violent event.

Whether the shooters survive to explain the "why" of their actions or
die without leaving behind an explicit rationalization, they tend to
share similar motivations, according to Schildkraut.

She says that typical "precipitating factors" are that the perpetrators
"feel ostracized by co-workers or maybe they feel like they've been
bullied or slighted in some way or maybe passed up for promotion."

workplace shootings
mass shootings
gun violence

Subject	Author
We're Seeing A Spike In Workplace Shootings. Here's Why	a425couple
Re: We're Seeing A Spike In Workplace Shootings. Here's Why	Baxter
Re: We're Seeing A Spike In Workplace Shootings. Here's Why	a425couple
Re: We're Seeing A Spike In Workplace Shootings. Here's Why	Baxter
Re: We're Seeing A Spike In Workplace Shootings. Here's Why	Al Czervik
Re: We're Seeing A Spike In Workplace Shootings. Here's Why	Al Czervik
Re: We're Seeing A Spike In Workplace Shootings. Here's Why	Baxter

"Life is too important to take seriously." -- Corky Siegel

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