One of this week’s active shooter incidents, the one outside Pittsburgh PA, brought up a safety design feature that most businesses don’t ever consider. When it comes to tackling workplace violence, most businesses believe that they have to go it alone. This is wrong. It takes a village to provide real security.
Here’s a quick recap of this week’s events from WPXI:
Drew Molinari, 34, was shot around 8 a.m. at Minniti Motorsports in the Tri-County Plaza shopping center. The victim was identified in a social media post by a man who said he was Molinari’s brother.
“The only description we have right now is: wearing a dark hoodie, possibly a blue hoodie, up over the side of his face,” Rostraver Township Police Chief Gregory Resetar said. “The individual walks into the establishment and just fired more than one round; struck and killed the victim.”
Police do not have a good description of the suspect because his face was covered. Investigators hope surveillance video or information from the public will help them find the shooter.
The investigators don’t have good video from the business itself but they are hoping that neighboring businesses’ surveillance cameras might have spotted something. That’s a shot in the dark. Most businesses have their cameras trained just on their establishment. That makes sense, individual businesses have limited resources for cameras, etc. and so they have to look out just for themselves.
We at Soteria Safety By Design believe that is a shortsighted and not very cost effective way to approach security problems. Throughout most of human history (before the advent of air conditioning) if you walked in a tiny hamlet, a medium-sized town or down a city block, you’d be watched by lots of eyes. Today in many locations throughout the world, government CCTV cameras are those eyes. According to some reports, the average Briton is under the surveillance of 300 cameras a day.
But many businesses don’t have that coverage for a variety of reasons including physical geography (American businesses can be more spread out), perceived threat (doctor’s office vs. a comic shop) and funding (bank vs. pretty much anyone else). But for small businesses working collectively can produce greater security as well as savings.
Schools have an advantage. Because of their large outside play areas, they usually have unobstructed views around the perimeter of their buildings. This makes it very difficult for anyone to approach unobserved by strategically-placed cameras.
Most workplaces have, at best, a patchwork of cameras, some placed there by the building’s management team,some by the individual businesses. None provide the full coverage that is required.
Take this week’s shooting, if the McDonald’s and the IHOP that overlook the site of the shooting were angled ever so slightly to overlap each other, then the shooter might have been spotted. Unfortunately no one thinks to ask to try to get that level of cooperation.
Coordinating security with other businesses has immediate benefits:
- You get better overlapping video surveillance coverage.
- You get to know each other better which helps open up communication about potential communal security threats.
- You will almost certainly get a volume discount from whatever security vendor you collectively choose.
- Your insurance will probably go down as well.
- When an employee at Business A sees something strange at Business B, they can call one number to alert the security company.
When it comes to preventing workplace violence, we at Soteria Group take a holistic approach to making the whole environment more secure. Take our workplace assessment to see where you (and possibly your neighboring businesses) can improve your workplace’s safety.