Hardly a week goes by when we don’t hear about a mass shooting somewhere in America. And while businesses are statistically among the most common sites for shootings to occur, most companies don’t have the security protocols in place to prevent a motivated person from entering a facility and committing violent acts. They simply assume it could never happen to them.
But when it comes to dealing with attacks, prevention and preparation are a better bet than denial. That’s where Gregory Vecchi comes in. As director of training at the crisis management firm SafeDefend LLC, he develops and deploys training programs for threat assessment, prevention, and response, with the end goal of helping businesses thwart attackers or at least mitigate the harm they can do.
Vecchi, who holds a Ph.D. in conflict analysis and resolution from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is a retired supervisory special agent and former chief of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit. During his career, he investigated Russian organized crime, international drug trafficking, international and domestic terrorism, and violent crime, and gained extensive experience assessing and interacting with violent offenders.
Vecchi also has a great deal of experience in teaching and training. He is currently a professor of criminal justice, criminology, and homeland security at Keiser University in Fort Lauderdale, where he develops and teaches courses at the master’s and doctoral levels. In addition, he conducts advanced law enforcement training in threat assessment, crisis negotiation, firearms, and defensive tactics and has served as an instructor at the FBI National Academy in Quantico, Virginia.
Vecchi spoke recently to DC Velocity Group Editorial Director David Maloney about workplace violence, including steps businesses can take to mitigate the risk and what to do in the case of an attack.
Q: We hear of mass shootings nearly every day in the news. Are these incidents actually on the rise or are they simply receiving more media attention than in years past?
A: I think it’s a combination of both, actually, and it is important to understand how these incidents happen. What we learned in the FBI is that every offender is a little bit different, and you have to understand the offender in order to best prepare yourself to deal with that offender. You’re trying to prevent violence, or you’re trying to respond to a very specific type of violence. It’s essentially a predator who is targeting other people or institutions in retaliation for a perceived wrong.
Q: DC Velocity focuses on warehousing, distribution, and manufacturing operations. Can you point to any incidents in these types of facilities?
A: There have been a number in your area of commerce. In fact, businesses are the second most probable location where one of these attacks is going to happen. Open spaces are number one, and schools are number three.
These attacks are obviously the worst type of violence. It’s workplace homicide, and it has increased 11% since 2014. In 2008, there was a plastics factory killing that took place in Kentucky. One of the plant’s current employees had a disagreement with a supervisor over wearing safety glasses and using a phone while on the job. He came in to work and killed the supervisor. Then he turned around and shot a coworker with whom he’d had a previous dispute in the back of the head. I think in total there were about nine or 10 people killed in that manufacturing plant. So yes, it happens.
Q: What motivates these folks to walk into a facility and begin shooting? Is it related to personal disputes between people? Is it a gripe that a worker has against the company? Or is it just spilling over from other kinds of violence, and it just happens to end at the facility?
A: It’s all of the above, but you’re dealing with a specific type of predator—someone who is preying on other people. There are three general types of predators that come to mind. The first is the process predator. This is the serial-killer-type person, the one who likes to kill people and enjoys violence. More than likely, that’s not going to be your guy in these facilities. The second is the resource predator, such as a bank robber who’s looking to take something that’s valuable. That’s also typically not what you deal with in these facilities.
Mostly, what you’re going to deal with in your context is what I like to call the grievance predator. This is someone who feels they were wronged by a person or maybe by the business itself. It’s someone who feels persecuted, isolated, or bullied—perhaps because of a difference in ideology. And almost always, there’s some significant loss in their life.
Q: Are there warning signs employers should look for?
A: Yes, there are specific warning behaviors. And actually, this is really the centerpiece of a prevention program in this regard. You know, there’s the bumper sticker slogan—“See something, say something”—and it really does point to what you need to do. One thing you have to realize is that these attacks don’t just happen on the spot. There’s no “snap effect.” If you look at the case after the attack, you’ll find that almost always, the person has a grievance that reaches a crisis stage, where they’re no longer able to cope with the situation.
You’ll probably see that they’ve tried to remedy the situation, and that it wasn’t remedied, and that the crisis escalated to the point where they saw violence as the only answer. It typically results in homicidal violence against the person they feel has wronged them, or maybe even the whole organization itself. So, everyone could be a target.
Q: What happens once they determine in their mind that violence is the only way to resolve the issue?
A: They then move on to researching and formulating a plan. They collect maps, they figure out the best time and place to target the person or persons who wronged them. And then they select their weapons. They might create hit lists. And finally, they actually get the gun or the knife or the ammo. They may also do feasibility checks or dry runs before actually launching the attack.
There’s essentially something like 10 steps in there, of which eight take place before the attack. Understand that these types of offenders are almost always current or former employees—someone you know, oftentimes someone you liked very much—but they are people who are in crisis. When someone reaches a crisis state, their behavior changes. Their normal behavior—the behavior that you see every single day—is going to change, and you will see anomalies or things that don’t quite fit.
Q: From what you just said, it seems that most of these attacks are planned with a lot of forethought, as opposed to somebody who just grabs a gun out of the car and comes in and starts shooting. It seems to be rather deliberate?
A: It is absolutely deliberate. Almost every single time, they prepare and they consider their plan. And they really do try to fix the problem for themselves first. In 2018, there was an incident at the Capital Gazette newspaper in Maryland. The guy’s grievance was that they had published something that made him look bad.
The story he objected to had been published around 2012. He initially tried to address the situation by writing letters to the editor, calling the writer, calling the police, trying to sue the paper for defamation, and all this stuff. It was six years before he finally decided he couldn’t take it anymore. And then he planned and carefully executed his attack on the newsroom, which resulted in five deaths.
Q: Are there basic preventive measures we can take to better secure our facilities?
A: There’s a lot you can do. First and foremost is to establish a threat assessment team. These are people at the HR level—or it could be at a supervisory level—who have special training to identify someone who might be on that pathway to violence and intervene. They understand how to make sense of these warning behaviors to hopefully get in front of it before anything happens.
Another thing you can do is to conduct a vulnerability and risk assessment, which entails looking at which buildings are vulnerable, and what are the most likely days and times for an attack to occur. And then, of course, there are mitigation and physical security measures, such as door locks, visitor controls, and things like that.
Q: What should employees do if there’s an active shooter on the premises?
A: Of course, we can’t prevent all incidents. And so, when it does happen, you should have a system in place to notify authorities and other workers. You should also train your employees on how to evade and escape the offender, as well as how to engage the offender.
Notification is important, but not more important than safety. Obviously, you want to try to call 911 and try to get help. The problem there is that the notification is almost too late, because the attack is already underway. Maybe you hear gunfire or people screaming. If that happens, the most important thing to do is to look after your own safety and the safety of others. The way we break it down is run, hide, and fight.
Q: Can you describe those actions in more detail?
A: Yes. So, the way I look at it is to have a Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C. Plan A is “escape.” You want to move yourself away from the offender. First and foremost, you have to know your workplace. You have to know where the escape routes and alternate exits are. Then before you try to escape, you have to look around to make sure the way is clear and that you’re not walking or running into danger. If you’re going to leave, leave everything behind, have nothing in your hands, put your cell phone and keys in your pocket, and leave as quickly and as quietly as possible.
Statistically, if you can keep at least eight feet of distance between you and the attacker and move in a zigzag pattern, rather than running away from the attacker in a straight line, your chances of survival go way up. And, of course, once you get outside, you want to keep moving until you find a safe location. It’s not like a fire drill where you go out in the parking lot and gather in a group, because there could be a second offender out there.
If you’re moving out, make sure that you don’t stop to help wounded people. If you stop to help someone, it could result in injury or death to you and that wounded person or anyone else you’re trying to help.
Q: What if you’re not able to escape. What are the options then?
A: If you can’t escape, then you go to Plan B, and that’s evasion, barricading, and lockdown. The most important thing here is to have a door that locks from the inside. We have found no reported cases of an active shooter hurting or killing someone who successfully locked themself inside a room and moved away from the door.
Next, you want to move heavy things in front of the door as an additional barricade and also as cover in the event he starts shooting, since there is no guarantee that the bullets won’t go through the door or through a window. You want to cover the windows, move off to the safest area away from the door, which really depends on the location. You should turn off the lights and silence your phones.
And remember the difference between cover and concealment. Cover is protection from gunfire, and concealment is protection from observation.
Q: And if you can’t escape or hide, what do you do then?
A: If Plan B doesn’t work, you have Plan C, and that’s the last-ditch effort, where you have to fight and engage the attacker. We would never expect an employee to go after an attacker. That’s not their job. But let’s say you were barricaded and the door didn’t lock or the attacker got through the door and started to enter the room. We’re talking about protecting the threshold of the door—or the window, if they’re trying to enter that way. You want to stay as far away as possible, but be prepared to engage. And that’s when you would employ your protection tools.
Ideally, you want to have things like pepper spray and a baton, and maybe a strobe flashlight to blind him. But really anything could work—coffee cups, fire extinguishers, heavy tools, or blunt objects. You essentially need to have a plan. If there are five people in the room, everyone should be assigned a job before the attacker enters. Someone’s going to take the hand with the gun, another takes the head, someone takes the other hand, and someone takes the groin. The idea is that if any body part or weapon crosses that threshold, you do everything you can to stop it and you don’t stop until that threat has ended.
Q: How does your company, SafeDefend, help companies prepare for what they hope will never happen?
A: SafeDefend has a singular focus on notifying and protecting people, both in schools and in workplaces. We prepare them with the protection necessary to deal with an active shooter—an active killer situation. SafeDefend is like a fire alarm system for active shooters. And like a fire alarm, it’s hardwired with biometric readers and is solely focused on that type of an attack.
When a threat occurs, an authorized person in the system places a finger on the biometric reader. It automatically notifies 911 within seconds and also provides notification through email and text to everyone in the building—all employees, contractors, custodians, administrators, whoever you want to be notified. It tells everybody in the building not only who set off the alarm, but also where the alarm is located, such as the room number, the floor number, and the nearest exit, which provides police with a starting point when they arrive.
Since I came to SafeDefend, I’ve been building not just a better response piece, but also bringing in my threat assessment experience on how to identify potential offenders before they get violent, based on behavior. And that’s the kind of the end-to-end piece that I bring to SafeDefend and that I’m most proud of.
