Experts say recent workplace shootings highlight the dangers of copycat crimes.
By Craig Savoye
Special to The Christian Science Monitor
and Laurent Belsie (belsiel@csps.com)
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Two tragic workplace shootings in recent weeks highlight what experts see as an insidious and growing element of violence in America - the copycat crime.
The incidents are putting renewed pressure on businesses to devise suitable prevention strategies. The imitative nature of the crimes is also raising questions about the responsibility of the media in chronicling such events.
"Absolutely, there's a copycat aspect to workplace violence," says James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston. "There's a copycat aspect to virtually all high-profile, high-visibility crimes."
Experts say imitation crimes have become an unfortunate byproduct of a media-saturated age and are a contributing factor in everything from school shootings to teen suicides.
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An unholy trinity
Park Dietz, founder of the Threat Assessment Group, a consulting firm in Newport Beach, Calif., that specializes in preventing workplace violence, sees an unholy trinity between mass murder, suicide, and copycat crimes. Sociologists have long worried about the copycat appeal of suicide, sometimes manifested as a cluster of teen deaths in a town.
Mr. Dietz says that in his interviews with surviving mass murderers, many say the same thing: "I saw no alternatives available, and I intended to die or force the police to kill me."
He estimates about half of all mass murderers either commit suicide or force police to kill them. Given the connection between copycat incidents and suicide, Dietz says the link between workplace murder and its mimicry is unchallengeable.
"Mass murder is a suicide fad, the frequency of which is determined more than anything else by news coverage," he says.
He notes that in three appearances over the years on CNN following mass murders, he has predicted another incident within two weeks. Tragically, he was right each time.
Experts believe the press and police attitudes toward mass murder need to shift so that workplace violence is viewed as a form of suicide prone to imitation. A lowering of the volume of coverage, they say, might result in fewer incidents.
