I haven’t “blogged” in a while about public place safety. From a personal perspective, I just wasn’t sure what new things to say that weren’t already included in previous blogs. I have always felt slightly larcenous in taking a new incident and wrapping it around something written specifically for some other violent act. Local occurrences are particularly difficult to reconcile. Following a shooting that occurred at a local automobile dealership here in Edmonton last year, Sterling Security was sought out by one local media outlet and we participated in a short on-air interview about violence involving the workplace. My partners and myself discussed the possibility of leveraging this incident in order to promote our products and training but were unable to do so in the shadow of the public pain and angst that this caused in the community. There were two problems really. Our work is a little raw, although we designed it this way purposely to gain the greatest training effect. The prospect, however, of presenting something to friends and family that might even remotely replicate an actual incident is horrifying. The second reason, of course, is that it is awkward to “profiteer” from such these profoundly unfortunate incidents.
Sterling’s partners dug deep into our own pockets to finance the production of “Collateral Damage-Surviving a Violent Encounter”. We were totally convinced that this kind of awareness training containing simple powerful messages and easily remembered strategies would be an instant “hit”. We were convinced that organizations would enthusiastically embrace an Occupational Health & Safety style solution based on training and awareness as opposed to turning their workplaces into heavily wired armed fortresses.
It is impossible to predict what might have mitigated the terrible incident in Arizona involving Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords but I can’t help but believe that spending 17 minutes watching Collateral Damage – How to Survive a Violent Encounter wouldn’t have helped at least some of those people.
