What would you say to this person?

by Melanie (First name only for security of the military member)
Health Promotion Officer

Imagine the following situation: A newly hired employee overhears two coworkers talking about their supervisor, Bill. One employee yells, “I’m sick and tired of Bill bossing me around. Let’s see what a tough guy he is right before I blow his brains out.” If you were that recently hired employee, would you know how to recognize the approaching violence and respond appropriately to the situation? An awareness of the motivation and risk factors for violence, the common targets of violence, and appropriate interventions/ response procedures and referral processes can assist people in recognizing and curbing violent behavior in the workplace. There are 2 million documented cases of workplace violence in the United States each year. The Air Force is not exempt from the violence and each year the military reports additional cases.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has compiled a list of indicators of potentially violent behavior which they gathered through workplace analysis. These indicators include direct or veiled threats of harm, intimidation, belligerence, harassment, bullying or other inappropriate and aggressive behavior. Other indicators are numerous conflicts with supervisors and other employees, bringing a weapon to the workplace when carrying a weapon isn’t a requirement of the job, brandishing a weapon in the workplace, making inappropriate references to guns or showing an undue attraction to weapons, statements indicating a fascination with incidents of workplace violence, statements indicating approval of the use of violence to resolve a problem or statements indicating identification with perpetrators of workplace homicides, statements indicating desperation (over family, financial and other personal problems) to the point of contemplating suicide, drug/ alcohol abuse, and extreme changes in behavior. Other warning signs of violence are a history of violence toward others, criminal/antisocial behavior, gun collector/ accessibility of weapons, history of impulsiveness and mental illness such as schizophrenia.

Some common precipitants to violence are substance abuse and a perceived loss and rejection such as the loss of a job or separation from a loved one through termination of a relationship or divorce. Frequently, former employers and spouses, marital counselors and divorce lawyers are targets of violence. It is imperative that threats are always taken seriously and that we act accordingly as though the person will carry out the threat. The potential target of violence should be informed of the threat. In addition, the affected employee’s work environment should be assessed and appropriate strategies and security measures should be considered while an initial investigation is commenced to assess the risks. Subsequent recommendations to protect employees should be made. Often, a mental health evaluation is necessary to determine whether an individual is at risk of committing a violent act.

Increased surveillance of a potential perpetrator is paramount if that individual remains on the job. Frequently, agencies will place the employee on administrative leave pending outcome of the investigation if it is felt that the employee’s continued presence on the job poses a potential danger to employees and that the potential for violence exists.

All workplace sites should have a reporting procedure for documenting all incidents of violence. Many agencies require employees to report incidents to their supervisor. It is important for agencies to have written plans for responding to workplace violence incidents. Be familiar with your agency protocol. All incidents of violent, threatening, harassing, intimidating or other disruptive behavior in the workplace should be reported immediately to a supervisor.

Threats or assaults that require immediate attention by police or security should be reported to the police by dialing 911 (if available in your area) or by dialing the police directly. If on base, dial security police at 2400. To reiterate, follow the policy of your agency with respect to workplace violence prevention. Some agencies require that you call the security personnel at the facility first; security will then call the police. Many agencies have programs in place to assist individuals after an incident of workplace violence. Assistance includes counseling and employee assistance referral and utilizing the Critical Incident Stress Team for traumatic events debriefing. The Critical Incident Stress Team (CIST) on base (also known as CISM) will be utilized for follow-up support, subsequent to all instances of workplace violence, including completed suicide.

This article appeared in our base publication. While anyone can agree that there is zero room for violence in the workplace, there is no way it can be denied that this is truly just an anti-gun effort.

I can find any substantiation of the 2 million documented cases each year. I CAN find that crime is thwarted close to 2 million times with the simple presence of a gun and that in only 1 percet of those instances it is fired and further that in only 1 percent is the assailant killed or severly injured.

The ominous thing is the warning signs to look out for. After all, this writer to military personell suggest that people with gun collections are inclined to violence. Garbage!

I would like to hear what you would write back. I have written a piece as long as this one in reply, but you may have something I should add to it.

You are correct, this is mere Clinton-era political indoctrination masquerading as "concern." The military is, in its little enclaves, a classical top-down socialistic arcology and many of these self-important little apparatchicks (pun intended) are simply playing the control game.

It is the view of the military as just another corporation, except one in which the workers can't vote with their feet. A certain type of paper-pushing nonentity thrives here. Fortunately these commisars are mostly irrelevant to the tiny minority of the military that actually fights.

I remember with fond amusement the day our [combat arms] company was mustered to listen to a certain commissar, a patently lesbian sergeant major, lecture us on sexual harassment. The ironies were rich and deep. She probably remembers the day too, not as fondly; she was rather roughly handled verbally. I believe she did complain to her commissar in chief and the complaint came through our chain of command as "General so-and-so says this, not that we care what he thinks." I do note that the farther people are removed from actual fighting, the more interest they have in uniforms, saluting, polishing things, playing date-of-rank and all the superficial marks of soldiering. You will not see these people in the rucksack carrying, rifle-operating, gravel-agitating, dirty and sweaty bit, where the regulations fall by the wayside and merit rules. Merit is a foreign concept to many so-called officers and soldiers.

It's the Army (or Air Force) as dude ranch or theme park for a lot of these people. The guns and planes and stuff are a backdrop for a nifty career playing soldier.

This stuff is all still there, and these commissars are all still there. (Hey, in a RIF you cut the combat troops, never the clerks). It's just waiting for a return of Hillary! to resume the ascendant. In which time people will pay it lip service, no more. It's just our version of the Communism that the professional soldiers in Russia had to deal with, and we are evolving the same kind of double standards and Emperor's New Clothes two-facedness that the Soviet Union forced upon its subjects.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

Oh yeah, in rereading this, it is truly hilarious that we are preserving the security of Health Promotion Officer Melanie's last name. See, she is playing the "I'm a very important Military Person" game the way all these bimbettes do. I am sure at least once a day she pulls rank on a junior person (probably a female. There is nothing like the cruelty that female officers show to female enlisted people). No reason, just because she can.

Compare the self-important "security consciousness" of this lightweight nonentity, with the fact that the team leader who led a Special Forces ODA alongside Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan has allowed his name and image to be widely published -- even though he continues to serve in hot spots all over the middle east.

The difference is, of course, that he has something she doesn't -- in both senses of the word.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

Agree, but I think the lines are blurred when there is a mix of military and civilian workers (particularly at the building I worked at). However, as you stated, most of the employees there have never heard a shot fired in anger, felt the thrill of returning fire effectively or bonded with a group of men (yes, men) who knew they were fighting for the guy next to them and not some nebulous concept.

This aspect is what concerns me most. Those of us priviledged enough to have been with other men in a unit where the lives of each other rested in all our hands know there is a bond not fully explained to us but existing. It is the power that dissolves the things that divides and unifies like no other. Without any emotional dribbal attached it is the closest thing to be intimatly married that you get with such people without the marriage certificate. It only gets stronger with the elite teams such as the SEALs and Delta folks. They are all by design aggressive, and gun enthusiast. Are they, too, suspect and to be feared? By this womans generalities they are. It is the manifistation of the poison brought about by those great socialist utopian Clintonistias upon his election. His election was looked at by liberals in the military as validation of their worldview.

Liberals in the military, such as Melanie, are the paper pushers who live to set military wide policy for those who fight our wars not ever learning what the military is really for.

Well said. It is what is happening here. After all, just because she is in a military organization and speaking with positional authority it is not to be questioned by many. However, this has never sat well with me so I speak up often and sometimes pay for it. I would not be a good officer if I did not tell my boss when something stupid is being done or said.

Here is what I replied to her with and I have been informed by our public affairs officer that she will have to address this article of her to my concerns or she will print my letter.

The recent article “Violence in The Workplace” from the June issue of the Transport Topics needs some serious attention to what it is saying.

While the message is clear that violent behavior in the workplace will in no way shape or form be tolerated I challenge the elements by which they define those attributes we ought to be living in fear of.

There is an assertion of 2 million documented cases of violence in the workplace each year in the US. I doubt it. I have personally heard of some in the local newspaper that an accused person was actually innocent and thus their situation was not what the complainant said it was, however, the news and statistic lovers never seem to drop the “Documented” part of that case. Many times complaints are made and documented but there is no validity to them. And while the USAF is not exempt from them, how many of them have happened here at our unit that require us to pay such attention as to inflame fears like this article does? Added to this is the fact that while working or on duty, U.S. residents experienced 1.7 million violent victimizations annually from 1993 to 1999 including 1.3 million simple assaults, 325,000 aggravated assaults, 36,500 rapes and sexual assaults, 70,000 robberies, and 900 homicides. Workplace violence accounted for 18% of all violent crime between 1993 and 1999. So are we to understand that it took 6 years to see 1.3 million “documented” cases but last year alone we had 2 million??? That is some increase, and it would dominate news reportage more than the September 11th attacks did. Research at the Bureau of Crime statistics would yield this information if you only look. Intellectual honesty would also have truth in reporting about the protective use of guns. Survey research during the early 1990s by criminologist Gary Kleck found as many as 2.5 million protective uses of firearms each year in the U.S. "[T]he best available evidence indicates that guns were used about three to five times as often for defensive purposes as for criminal purposes," Kleck writes. Analyzing National Crime Victimization Survey data, he found "robbery and assault victims who used a gun to resist were less likely to be attacked or to suffer an injury than those who used any other methods of self-protection or those who did not resist at all." (Targeting Guns, Aldine de Gruyter, 1997) While this is not specific to the workplace it does include it.

“making inappropriate references to guns or showing an undue attraction to weapons,”

The above statement is very nebulous. It leaves anyone with an anti-gun sentiment the ability to go and make a federal case out of legitimate hobbyist and hunters’ enjoyment of guns. I love guns. I love to shoot, as does my family. I have talked about going to matches and of hitting targets and hunting trips with friends. It is completely legitimate and normal yet we are now to believe that the Air Force seems all to eager to head down the path of political correctness where this is now an evil thought, or at least an “undue attraction.” There is a second amendment and it exists to protect the very right to that gun, to those events and to that hunting. What is amazing is that an earlier article in Transport Topics hails the 14 unit members of our base shooting team. The article spoke highly of the shooting team. Does that team have an undue attraction? No real definition leaves this open to those who just don’t like guns to make a mountain out of nothing at all.

What really made this article stand out to me is that in the list of things we ought to be worried about is the “other warning signs of violence” which simply includes “gun collector/ accessibility of weapons.” Does the writer realize just how many of the US military that includes?? Are we all suspect? Words mean things and they tear down as much as they empower. When a vicious label is placed upon all legitimate, law-abiding citizens or American serving military members it is blight upon those who make it and an intolerable insult to those they carelessly label.

Please tell me your thoughts.

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