Awakened from a deep sleep by the midnight call, the corporate-level chief security officer of this Fortune 500 Company knew he was in for a nightmare. His director of security for the firm’s Texas manufacturing facility was on the brink of panic. “One of our employees gunned down, execution-style, a female coworker at the time-clock, fired multiple shots at other employees, and then blew his brains out in the cafeteria.  The police are here. It’s bad – real bad.”  The CSO knows how the rest of the story will unfold, because local management had severely underestimated future risks when the employee was involved in a serious altercation with the same coworker months earlier.

Security directors’ and executives’ careers are dramatically altered when the unthinkable happens. The loss of human life, coupled with the loss of trust by coworkers and senior executives, puts careers in jeopardy. Most organizations wait for legal counsel to retain expert witnesses only after lawsuits for negligent hiring, security, supervision, premises liability and failure to warn are upon them. Yet, many enterprising security leaders follow the longstanding practice of having experts already in place, rather than waiting for tragedy and subsequent litigation to strike.