This article is a fascinating, and sad, insight into the challenges and unintended consequences of threat management.
According to police, Travis Merrill of Lewisville, Texas became obsessed with his co-worker and, angered by her avoidance of him after a report to HR, killed her at her desk.
The most common failures in threat management are those of inaction: failure to detect threats or failure to take mitigation action. Incidents and warning signs often go unreported, and even when reported many are ignored. In this case, however, the impacted employee flagged her concerns and the company took at least some steps to manage the risk. Merill was forced to attend counseling and some efforts were made to separate the two in the workplace.
Unfortunately, these attempts at mitigation were the catalyst for his transition from ideation to action. Having been forced into counseling, Merill said that when he returned to work, he could tell “everyone must think he’s a psychopath” and that his co-worker was avoiding him. Despite numerous studies showing a strong link between shame and violence, many intervention strategies actually reinforce the very feelings that are at the root of the grievance. In this case, the unintended consequence of this mitigation strategy was to exacerbate the subject’s existing feelings of shame and anger, increasing the risk of violence.
This is part of a wider challenge in threat management, that mitigation actions will actually increase the risk of violence. Law enforcement engagement, for example, is a mitigation step that is both critical and at times subject to unintended consequences. When companies escalate to law enforcement, they lose control of the mitigation narrative. The subject’s grievance may be heightened at the company “calling the cops on them.” The subject may be motivated to act in the belief that the police are closing in. Especially if – as is often the case – the police do not have grounds to detain the person at the initial encounter.
The most important thing is to identify, acknowledge and act on risks of violence. However, *how* you act – and how you manage the unintended consequences of those actions – is what makes the difference in effective end-to-end threat management.