Report on Workplace Violence in Wakefield, Mass.

On December 26th, 2000, Michael McDermott, an engineer at the Edgewater Technology murdered 7 co-workers in Wakefield, Massachusetts. In response, the State’s Public Safety Department developed a range of studies and reports, one of the latest being a report developed by the Wakefield Police Department and the Northeastern University. This 2004 study of focus groups and employee surveys provided information on the prevalence of workplace violence, various perceptions of the problem and proposed solutions.
Among the finding, overtly threatening behavior was the most commonly cited form of workplace violence behavior. While robberies were noted as the most frequent type, verbal threats came in second. Females tended to be more aware of how domestic violence is a serious risk to the workplace and appeared to have more concerns about violence exhibited at work in general. Although managers and employees indicated that they experience the same rate of violence, managers were less concerned about the issue compared to their employees. This was especially true in the high-tech industries. Most of those who had experienced some form of workplace violence did not make a report because they believed that it was not important enough. In terms of police support, almost half wanted bulletins regarding local crimes, especially near their businesses and about a third wanted increased patrolling during certain times of the day.

The full report is available from the Wakefield Police Department at http://www.wakefieldpd.org/Pages/WakefieldPD_WebDocs/Articles/workplace_violence.pdf

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