With the recent shooting at the Empire State building, the focus is back on workplace violence.  While it is extremely important to maintain vigilence in the workplace, it is equally important to understand that:

1. Despite the high profile media attention that acts of workplace violence generate, these types of incendents are extremely rare and,

2. As with terrorist attacks, they rarely occur without the perpatrator exhibiting suspicious behavior, which is easily observed by the untrained eye, well in advance of the attack.  If this behavior is reported and the intelligence acted upon, most incidents can be difused before an attack takes place.

Stratfor’s Scott Stewart details a number of ways in which employees can through their own vigilence, take ownership of their own safety at their place of work to help ensure that a similar tragedy never occurs at their place of work.

You can read his report (report name) via Stratfor:

Countering Workplace Violence

While the report focuses on the voilence between coworkers, it is interesting to note that the nine bystanders that were wounded in the Empire State Building shooting were injured by NYPD police gunfire as they tried to aprehend the assailent.  Sadly, it is simply another of many examples of how one senseless act of violence leads to another, a fact of life when society subscribes to the “Might makes right” doctrine as its guiding light.