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| Good security basics enabled a security response before the shooting started |
Mass shootings by emotionally disturbed individuals and terrorists have led authorities and security professionals to search for means of prevention.
“Analyzing an actual incident in which a potential shooter was stopped seconds before becoming active can illustrate how solid security basics can help prevent catastrophe,” says Drew Neckar, CPP, CHPA, regional director of security with the Mayo Clinic Health System in Eau Claire, Wis.
The incident occurred in a hospital in Lacrosse, Wis., in 2008.
Around 7:15 a.m. on a Saturday morning, a cafeteria employee noticed a man in a black trench coat standing in the back of the room looking around but not moving toward the food line.
The employee thought the behavior unusual. She approached the man and asked if he needed help. He patted his side and, while no gun was visible, said, “No, it’s okay. I have a permit.”
The employee smiled, excused herself and hurried to the security center where Drew Neckar was the security dispatcher. She told Neckar about the encounter.
“We had two unarmed security officers patrolling that morning,” Neckar recalls. “I radioed them to find the man. They searched on foot; I checked the cameras. I also called the police — just in case.”
The hospital’s video surveillance system provided complete coverage of hallways and intersections, entrances and exits and chokepoints. The system also divided coverage rationally into public and non-public areas. Neckar flipped quickly through the public area cameras and found the man in a fifth floor corridor talking to a nurse. He radioed the patrolling officers.
During the investigation later, it came out that the man was asking the nurse for directions to the intensive care unit. She had responded that intensive care was on another floor. That seemed to confuse him.
“It probably took less than 10 minutes from the first report until the officers reached the fifth floor and approached the man,” says Neckar.
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| The hospital had also made intelligent use of technology with complete, easy-to-monitor camera coverage |
They asked him to open his coat, but he reached into his coat. The two officers immediately tackled and handcuffed him. A search turned up a loaded .44 Magnum revolver.
The police arrived and took the man into custody.
“During the investigation after the incident, we learned how close we were to tragedy,” Neckar says. “The man was homeless and had suffered from mental health issues most of his life. He had just come off a four-year treatment and medication plan ordered by the court following another arrest for carrying a concealed weapon.”
When the court-ordered treatment ended, he had stopped taking his prescribed medications, lost his home and wife and ended up in Lacrosse.
What precipitated his visit to the hospital?
Four weeks earlier, a retired teacher, who blamed a nurse for the death of his mother, shot the nurse and two others in the intensive care unit on the fifth floor of a hospital in Columbus, Ga.
In this case, the potential shooter had seen his mentor, a music professor, die in the Lacrosse hospital.
It’s an interesting look into the mind of a potential copycat shooter. He had confused the circumstances of the Georgia shooting with his own story and apparently set out to imitate the revenge scene that had played out in an intensive care unit on the fifth floor of another hospital.
“The lessons of this incident stem from what went right,” says Neckar. “First, alert employees reported unusual behavior.
“We train employees to recognize and report suspicious behavior,” Neckar says, pointing to the emerging discipline of behavior pattern recognition being taught more and more to security officers and employees alike.
The hospital had also made intelligent use of technology with complete, easy-to-monitor camera coverage. In Neckar, there was an experienced dispatcher skilled at making quick video patrols of the facility. Finally, the security officers were experienced and well trained.
In the end, good security basics enabled a security response before the shooting started.
