Does Serving the Public Mean Sacrificing Your Safety?

In one week, several high profile public officials have reported violent threats to their safety. 

First, there were the six congress members, all Democrats with prior military and national security backgrounds, who received violent threats against their safety for calling on members of the military to resist illegal orders.

The death threats came despite their just reminding the troops that existing law already prohibits the military from following illegal orders. 

Then came the violent threats against Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was warned by security professionals of threats against her safety after she pushed for the release of the Epstein files.

The threats against her safety spurred her announcement that she’s leaving congress in January.

Will these kinds of threats of violence lead to actual violence?

It’s too soon to know.

And it’s not just legislators, who face threats to their safety. Career public servants including teachers, election officials, judges, utility workers, and even road maintenance crews, are routinely subjected to violent threats to their safety.

Whether you’re a government employee, or an elected official, do you feel that you have to sacrifice your safety in order to serve?

As a society, that’s a question we need to answer. And fast. Because people are leaving public service over concerns for their safety, and for their families too. And that affects all of us.

In this piece, we’ll look at steps people serving the public can take to keep safe from violence so you can keep doing the work that you want to do. 

I’ve spent 15 years providing workplace violence and personal safety training. I’ve trained the staff of a United States Senator, judges, and court officials among other public officials how to keep safe from violence.

I’ve got a free guide that helps people stay safer at work. You can download it here. 

Violence against elected public officials is most often carried out by lone wolf attackers. And they seldom make threats prior to their violent attack. 

Instead, they operate in relative secrecy until the attack happens. In most cases, the victims of their violence didn’t know the attacker at all.

And those who work in public service are oftened physically threatened on the spot, without prior warning, by those they serve. Usually in a fit of rage over a perceived slight while they’re interacting. 

So does that mean that people serving the public should ignore violent threats?

No. Definitely not.

The shooting of the former Minnesota House Speaker along with her husband, and a Minnesota State Senator, and his wife, in June of this year, make it clear that public officials must take threats to their safety seriously, and that they should take concrete steps to keep themselves and their families safe.

So where should you begin to take these steps? Start with these basics.

Conduct a safety/threat assessment. First, you need to know where your greatest safety risks will come from. To do that you’ll need to conduct a thorough safety assessment. This process will help you to identify from whom, where, and how you are at the greatest risk for a violent attack. 

The Minnesota attacks occurred at legislators homes, so when you conduct your safety assessment, go broader rather than narrower. It’s not just at your workplace where you have a safety risk, but at your home, and while you're out in the community too. 

A successful violent attack requires the attacker to have access to you. Lone wolves often distinguish themselves from the more typical angry person who lashes out, by their in depth planning prior to their attack. They will study their target, and conduct recon looking for points of access and vulnerability. 

An angry person that lashes out, such as the angry parents at a school board meeting, is operating in the heat of the moment. More on reactivity than prior study, so you’ll want to assess the work processes where you are more likely to encounter an emotionally driven person.

It’s only by conducting a safety/threat assessment that you’ll know where to focus your safety efforts. 

Remedies based upon your safety assessment. Once you’ve identified the who, where and how through your safety/threat assessment, you’ll need to develop approaches to lessen that risk. 

Keep in mind that there is no such thing as being 100% safe. There will always be ways that you can be targeted with violence. The trick is to lessen that likelihood to a manageable risk level.

The best way to develop remedies to potential safety threats is to take the information you develop through the safety/threat assessment that you conduct, and to use that information to reverse engineer the way a potential violent attack could happen. 

From there, you can look at your current work practices, and look for changes that you can make to those practices that will help to reduce your exposure to a violent attack.

For example, through your assessment you determine that the most likely place for a violent attack to occur is where you park your car. Reverse engineer how an attack there might occur, and look at the practices you now use, and what changes to those practices you can do, such as circling the parking lot before pulling into your parking space instead of driving straight to your parking space, so that you can detect and avoid a person who could be waiting by your parking spot to ambush you. 

Identify and implement strategies to avoid physical harm. No matter what safety precautions you take, a violent attack can still happen. 

So a key element of your safety involves determining which strategies to avoid physical harm are the most relevant to your safety risks, so that you can implement them in order to avoid physical harm from an attack.

There are times that violence is inevitable, but being catastrophically injured and impacted for life, does not have to be the result. When an attack happens, it’s your ability to apply the different strategies to avoid physical harm that matter the most for your safety.

Implementation requires learning these skills, and then practicing them until you can use them automatically without having to think first.  

The most effective strategies include: 1) Situational awareness. Which involves learning to read the environment around you and the people within it so that you can recognize and avoid a potential threat to your safety.  2) Developing ways of communicating concerns about your safety to people who can assist you in keeping safe. 3) De-escalating tense situations so that you can keep them from escalating into violence. 4) Changing the dynamics of a physical attack so that you can take away an attacker’s initial advantage at the start of an attack/ 5) Self-defense so that you can keep from being injured sufficiently to be able to exit safely. 

The biggest safety risk you face comes from when you cede responsibility for your safety to others. Because in the end, the calvary isn’t coming. So when it comes to your safety, and that of your loved ones, the absolute best person to keep you and them safe from a violent attack is you. 

Check out my free guide on workplace violence prevention here.