Category Archives: OIG Office of the Inspector General

RISKAlert – May 2014 Shooting at VA Medical Center, Dayton, Ohio

RiskAlert         INCIDENT REPORT 552 – HOSPITAL SHOOTER

Terminated Employee Shoots Staff Member during Card Game
at Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio

Allowing terminated employees to have access to a hospital or facility where they
worked before is a questionable decision, because not only anger at the organization,
but also a
nger at individuals and former co-workers may turn into an incident as this report
explains.

In early May, a terminated housekeeper at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio came back to the hospital to play cards in a hospital break room with a group of current VA staff.   The perpetrator, Neil Moore, had also brought a handgun to the hospital.  Neil was upset because he thought another VA staff member was having a relationship with his wife, so he pulled out the gun, and as a result, one person was shot in the ankle.

It was not a typical active shooter scenario, but it does point outVAMC-DaytonOH
the access control problem in hospitals, and also questions the
ability for anyone to walk into a hospital with a loaded gun
.

LESSONS LEARNED:

 1.  Access to former employees should be prohibited or at
least limited on a case by case basis.

 2.  Visitors should not be allowed to bring guns into a hospital.
      Metal detectors should be used to screen for weapons.

 

Moore, a former employee at the Veterans Affairs hospital, told police that he was going to a regular card game with
his former co-workers.  He said he went to the hospital Monday intending to brandish the handgun to intimidate two former co-workers he believed were involved in relationships with his wife and daughter, both of whom reportedly work at the hospital.  Moore planned to “hold the ex-co-workers at gunpoint while he punched them with his right hand,” according to court documents.

The hospital complex has beds for about 450 people and provides veterans with medical, mental health and nursing home care. It doesn’t have metal detectors at its entrances, but it does have its own security force.

VA spokesman Ted Froats said the force conducts active shooter training four times a year and showed outstanding response Monday. He said in a statement Tuesday that the hospital will consider additional steps to ensure safety, while making sure that any new measures won’t impede the hospital from providing care to veterans as quickly as possible.

RISKAlert®  is a publication of Risk & Security LLC at www.riskandsecurity.com

New Active Shooter App Announced on October 20, 2013

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New Active Shooter app released to reduce likelihood of an Active Shooter Incident.

Active Shooter incidents have increased both in the number of incidents, as well as the number of people killed and injured in the last five years.  As an aspect of  workplace violence, the active shooter has become is a serious recognized occupational hazard, ranking among the top four causes of death in workplaces during the past 15 years. More than 3,000 people died from workplace homicide between 2006 and 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Additional BLS data indicate that an average of more than 15,000 injuries were annually during this time.

The latest figures show that high-risk organizations like hospitals, schools, malls, universities, military installations and even hair salons have experienced an active shooter incident and are likely to have a dramatically increased risk for experiencing an active shooter incident in the future.

Risk & Security LLC has released a new web-based app, Active Shooter Risk-Pro©, which offers an easy to use risk assessment program that assesses your organizational risk of an active shooter incident, as well as recommending solutions to prevent an incident from occuring in the future.

In additional to using the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Guidelines on Active Shooter Response, the OSHA standard 3148 (Guidelines for Preventing Workplace Violence for Health Care, the FBI and Secret Service Guidelines on Active Shooter Incidents, and the new OSHA Inspection Directive, Enforcement Procedures for Investigating or Inspecting Incidents of Workplace Violence, from September, 2011, are both included in the new, easy-to-use application.

The program has been tested on some of the largest organizations in the US, and runs on a laptop, PC or tablet, and even on a smartphone!.  Active Shooter Risk-Pro©  is built to be affordable and simple to use.

The web 2.0 program, includes newly compiled, updated threat databases, new active shooter incident analysis metrics, and automated web-surveys based on the DHS Guidelines..

The new program gives human services and security professionals a quick and easy way to conduct a active shooter, or general workplace violence that will recommend that will pass an audit!

The Risk-Pro©  model has been used for easy software applications by the Department of Defense and over hundreds of organizations, hospitals, and local, state and federal government agencies.

About Risk & Security  LLC

Risk & Security  LLC is a security risk assessment and risk analysis company with over 30 years of combined expertise in security risk assessment. It develops specialized programs and applications which are easy to use, affordable and which help organizations assess their risk, the likelihood of becoing a target, and which recommend cost-effective solutions.

Risk & Security offers full service consulting on critical risk assessments including HIPAA Risk Analysis, Facilities Security Assessments, Hospital Security Assessments, Workplace Violence, Active Shooter Incident Assessment, Environment of Care and more.  Risk & Security partners with security companies around the world to provide state-of-the-art security expertise to analyze risk and recommend cost-effective security controls justified by return on investment metrics.

The team of risk and security experts is led Caroline Ramsey-Hamilton, who has created more than 40 software programs, and conducted more than 200 specialized security risk assessments in a variety of environments, including companies in the United States and around the world, including in Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, Japan, South Africa and Qatar.

Contact Information:

Caroline Ramsey-Hamilton, CHS III

Email:  caroline@riskandsecurityllc.com

Phone:  301-346-9055

Twitter:  www.twitter.com/riskalert

 

DOD-OIG Report on Security Weaknesses at the Navy Yard

The recently released 56-page report by the Department of Defense, Office of the Inspector General found that the Navy Access Control System did not adequately control the risks to the Washington DC Navy Yard and other sites under their control.

NCACS did not effectively mitigate access control risks associated with contractor installation access. This occurred because Commander,
Navy Installations Command (CNJC) officials attempted to reduce access control costs.

As a result, 52 convicted felons received routine, unauthorized installation access, placing military personnel, dependents, civilians, and
installations at an increased security risk.

Additionally, the CNIC N3 Antiterrorism office (N3AT) misrepresented NCACS costs. This occurred because CNIC N3AT did not perform
a comprehensive business case analysis and issued policy that prevented transparent cost accounting of NCACS. As a result, the Navy
cannot account for actual NCACS costs, and DoD Components located on Navy installations may be inadvertently absorbing NCACS costs
.
Furthermore, CNIC N3AT officials and the Naval District Washington Chief Information Officer circumvented competitive contracting
requirements to implement NCACS. This occurred because CNIC N3AT did not have contracting authority. As a result, CNIC N3AT
spent over $1.1 million in disallowable costs and lacked oversight of, and diminished legal recourse against, the NCACS service provider.

You can read the entire report at:  http://www.dodig.mil/pubs/documents/DODIG-2013-134.pdf

 

Courtesy Caroline Ramsey-Hamilton at Risk and Security LLC

caroline@riskandsecurityllc.com