Active Shooter Incidents, Part II: Planned Responses to Targeted Violence Across Industries and Worksites

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Karen Tynan: Hello, everyone, and 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 with me today is Dan Skoczylas, 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 part two of a three-part podcast series and an important topic for employers looking to address workplace violence hazards. Now in part one, we started referring to you as Lieutenant Dan, so I’m going to threaten to keep doing that to you, Dan.

Dan Skoczylas: That’s quite all right.

Karen Tynan: I’m sure a lot of your friends do that in law enforcement. So, Dan, Lieutenant Dan, we talked in part one about the FBI report, and we just started touching on this average incident duration that the FBI reports on. And for categories of the events, like the average incident duration is only three minutes and 18 seconds, and the average law enforcement response is one minute 48 seconds. You touched on it about that giving kind of a false sense of security, but let’s talk about that data as it relates to employer training and employer responses. So, can you give the listeners your thoughts about what that data means or doesn’t mean for our training in the workplace and the employer’s planned response to an active shooter?

Dan Skoczylas: Yeah, absolutely. So, thanks again for having me back, Karen.

Karen Tynan: Of course.

Dan Skoczylas: I appreciate the opportunity to continue this conversation. When we do our training events, our live training events, we always tell the lawyer to anticipate that the police are never going to get there in time to do you any good except wrap yellow crime scene tape around the building. On occasions, more and more we’re seeing where the police actually arrive on the scene and engage the shooter or are able to take the shooter in custody. But by and large, statistically one person is shot every 15 seconds once the shooting starts until the shooter is disabled or put down or taken into custody, whatever the case may be. So, the one minute 48 second response time is just unrealistic. Generally speaking, we tell people that it’s going to take, if everything falls into place perfect, it’s going to take the officer six minutes to arrive on scene.

Karen Tynan: Wow.

Dan Skoczylas: Six minutes is 24 people dead if the statistic of one shot every 15 seconds is accurate. So, unless the people inside, the intended victims are trained and groomed to take action themselves, there’s simply going to be a real statistic in the next FBI report.

Karen Tynan: Wow. And when you say it that way about figuring on law enforcement response and the shots fired and employees, it really brings home the gravity of the situation and that the idea that we are just going to maybe hide and call 911 and wait for the cavalry to come in, just doesn’t sound like a realistic expectation, if I’m understanding you correctly. Is that right, Dan?

Dan Skoczylas: It is correct. If you think about what you’re asking to occur during the course of one minute and 48 seconds or what they’re leading you to believe is going to occur, somebody’s going to first identify that there’s a shooter in the building. They’re going to have the wherewithal to dial 911 first and be able to accurately relay their position and what’s going on to that 911 dispatcher. That 911 dispatcher is then going to send that information out to any squad cars that might happen to be in the area that can start to advance on that facility. There’s a lot that has to occur just right for this to even happen within six minutes time. One minute and 48 seconds is an improbable estimate of response time.

Karen Tynan: When it says response time, that’s not the time to when the shooter’s apprehended and the shooting stops either. That’s law enforcement response time. Am I understanding that correctly too?

Dan Skoczylas: That’s correct. If you look at a facility like a high school, for instance, that response time documents when the first squad car pulls up in front of the building, now they’ve got to get in that building and find the shooter. It may take them another 10, 15 minutes to do that.

Karen Tynan: And I think about for our clients, big warehouse facilities, big manufacturing facilities, and if you think about, let’s say the size of a house is 2,000 square feet, some of these warehouses and manufacturing locations are hundreds of thousands of square feet. And so, the idea that, okay, well, law enforcement may be there in a few minutes, that doesn’t mean that everything’s under control in that time. So, I like the education around that because I think it helps set expectations for the employers for their work site and workplace safety and workplace violence prevention. Now, another aspect of the FBI report, and I see it as a question from businesses a lot, is about security personnel. So, in the 2024 report, the FBI reports only one incident where security personnel intervened within that commerce category that we talked about in part one. So, with you and your experience in law enforcement and your current experience with training and getting out to these sites for workplace violence prevention, what are your thoughts on security personnel intervention and any training in the workplace that supports that intervention?

Dan Skoczylas: That’s a great question. We have security resources at our fingertips that we will frequently refer out to clients that are in positions where they need to have those things. However, sometimes it’s a struggle. We’ll get a client that calls and says, “Hey, I need security here because we’ve had what we believe to be a viable threat that we’re working through, but I want the security guard to be unarmed because we don’t want any guns on the premises.” That security guard ends up being target number one, because you’ve put this poor individual in a uniform that says security all over it, and then he has no means to defend himself or herself against an active threat. And if you are going to employ or deploy, I guess security personnel in your workspace, then they need to be very well versed, very well-trained with regard to what your policies, practices, and procedures are. How do you operate and how can they enhance the security as a result of their presence as opposed to just being another potential victim in the incident.

Karen Tynan: I like the way you word that because sometimes I hear from folks or you’ll see online or however you get the information is that employers or business owners will think, “Well, I’ve got a security guard, I’m good to go.” And what you’re talking about is yes, you can have the security guard, the security personnel, but they have to be integrated into the procedures. They have to know what the expectations are, where are the badging into the doors? What is our emergency action plan? Where do we go when we get out of the building? What are our secure locations? Things like, how do we alert other employees? Do we have a tech system? Do we have an audible alarm? What do we do? And I agree with you and I see sometimes the idea that security personnel is kind of a one thing you need to do, but I like the way you frame it as the security personnel is a more integrated part of an overall prevention kind of policy.
Now in this 2024 report, there’s a behavioral analysis aspect in this report, and I’d like to get your thoughts on it. So, in the report, the behavioral analysis indicates that acts of targeted violence that are intentional in nature in which the perpetrator considers, plans, and prepares for the act of violence are preceded by observable warning signs and behaviors that if recognized, can provide opportunities for disruption. Now through the law enforcement lens, can you explain what that means in the FBI report and then how you talk to clients and businesses about what that means?

Dan Skoczylas: Yeah, absolutely. And my experience in law enforcement really enhances my perspective of this because over the course of 24 years, I cannot tell you, Karen, how many times I would respond to a victim’s complaint to take a report or get the story from them and the first words out of their mouth is, “I knew this was going to happen. I could have told you this six months ago. I know who did this.” And I’m thinking, “So why would you wait until after the fact to call us and do something about it?” I’m baffled. So, the phrase, “see something, say something” actually has merit. And I agree with that aspect of the report that most of these people that are planning these things and putting a lot of effort into planning them can’t keep their mouths shut about it. They will tell somebody ahead of time, and you just have to, if you’re the recipient of that information, prevent yourself from talking yourself out of reporting it to the proper authority so that something can be done about it before somebody ends up dead.

Karen Tynan: I think that is a really critical part of understanding workplace violence prevention. And what I see in where you’re talking about this escalation or someone is talking at work or their behaviors indicate that they’re planning, they’re preparing for an act of violence. And a lot of times I see HR professionals and risk managers are the people who get this information. And one thing that I do like in workplace violence plans is that there is a method for employees to report threats, behaviors that they want management or HR, whoever to address. Whether it is a 1-800 number, whether it is a method, a person to go to that everybody knows that Jane Doe, the head of risk management, is the person that’s in charge of our workplace violence prevention plan.
She’s the person you go to to report any threatening behavior, workplace violence threat, workplace violence acts. And I do agree with you, in my experience in working with folks, many times there is something that happened before, whether it’s someone who makes a comment about having a weapon or that they’re very frustrated with a coworker and plan to take action, things like that. And so, let me pivot and ask you, when we’re working with folks on workplace violence prevention training, do you see that folks are including de-escalation techniques or things like that that maybe give coworkers a skill set to kind of de-escalate escalating behavior? What do you think of that?

Dan Skoczylas: I think it can be beneficial, but it’s like anything else. If you don’t practice it on a regular basis, you’re not going to be able to hone those skills.

Karen Tynan: Good point.

Dan Skoczylas: So, de-escalation is something, that type of training is something that we saw in the police department all the time. We used to call it verbal judo back in the day to talk these people down so that you would not have to go hands-on with them. But we use that type of skill set every single day, and unless you do that, I don’t know that you’re going to be able to hone it enough for it to be effective. I like your comment and your idea and some of the things that they’re implementing with regard to reporting and making sure that something is said before it turns bad. That is probably a better approach for the average employer than trying to teach de-escalation techniques overall, although I have seen de-escalation used in retail things where you get an irate customer, and they employ some of those techniques just to keep them calm enough long enough for them to call the police and get a response there to have them removed.

Karen Tynan: You mentioned retail and certainly in the New York Retail Worker Safety Act, de-escalation is part of that training, and I do see a distinction. Retail businesses tend to have that training more so than say someone in manufacturing or warehousing because there’s going to be that customer interaction where de-escalation can, like you say, by time and be a good technique to use to protect the workers and prevent workplace violence. So, I’m glad you wove in a bit about retail. Now in the 2024 report, the FBI does take a five-year look back, and I noticed that the top states for the most active shooter incidents, and it’s their definition, which we already know is kind of a narrow definition that doesn’t include lots, but the top three states are California, Texas, Florida. Now, do you have any ideas of why that is? Is it about, well, these are populous states, are there particular vulnerabilities? What do you think drives the fact that California, Texas, and Florida are the top states looking back five years for the FBI?

Dan Skoczylas: Yeah, Karen, I think it may really probably relate mostly to the population and the density of the population. If you look at California and Texas, by and large, two of the biggest states in the United States, if not the biggest population-wise and size-wise. Florida, I think that they’ve got a massive population. And certainly, the gun laws in both of those, in all three of those states vary. Texas is going to be more friendly to Second Amendment rights as is Florida, whereas California is more restrictive to those rights. So, I would have to lay it squarely at the feet of the population, just the likelihood of having an event in one of those three.

Karen Tynan: Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too with the population really sounds like it’s the driver. And I will share, the last time I went to a conference in Texas, we were all out and it was the first time I ever saw a sign on a bar that said, “No guns while you’re drinking.” It had something like that where I thought that was interesting looking at the different states. And I’m like you, I just don’t see particular vulnerabilities or other nuances within states. What I see is those are really the top populous states, and that’s why the numbers are. Now, I want to ask you my last question for this podcast, part two of three. In this five-year look back, June and the summer months have the highest incidence of active shooters. I’m not sure why that is. I’m asking you, is there anything that makes you think, well, there’s something, a reason that drives June and the summer months as the highest incidence of active shooters in our country?

Dan Skoczylas: And again, I’m going to throw a little bit of grammar school science into this-

Karen Tynan: Oh, good.

Dan Skoczylas: Because it was a phenomenon that we dealt with all the time when I was on the police department. Molecules tend to move faster when they’re heated up. So, when you’re talking about people and you compare them to molecules, I think they’re just more active and they have more interaction with other people when things are warmer. In the wintertime, you want to get inside, you’re going to turn the TV on and doze off in front of the fireplace, where in the summertime you’re out in the backyard or hanging out with your friends or other people enjoying the summer months and the heat and the barbecues and the alcohol that goes with that and so forth and so on. So, I really don’t know that there’s a whole lot to analyze. Again, when you’re talking about statistics and whatnot with regard to the time of year, I think it’s more simplistic than that. During the summer months, on the police department, they were always 50, 60, 70 times busier in July than you ever were in January. January’s cold. People don’t want to be outside. So, the warmer weather fires people up a little more.

Karen Tynan: I think that’s an interesting point, and what it makes me think is if we’re going to do annual active shooter workplace violence training, maybe the best month to do my training for active shooters, workplace violence might be May and June, where my training isn’t going to be more fresh when the risk is higher. I have a lot of folks who are, because of SB 553 being implemented July 1, 2024, they’re doing their annual training in June 2025. And it makes sense to me that a lot of folks are doing their annual training now, and maybe that does line up at a riskier time.
I’m kind of a data nerd, so I love talking about data and what it means and actually what it doesn’t mean. And I like your points around the summer months. So don’t forget, this was part two and a three-part series. Thanks for listening to Karen and Dan today. Look for our Ogletree blogs on ogletree.com. Check out our practice page, the Workplace Violence Prevention Practice Group on that same website, look for our webinars, and a ton of other podcasts and blog posts on workplace violence. Stay safe out there.

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