Search Goes On for Answers to Violence in the Workplace

The Los Angeles city technician kicked a chair across the room after one bad performance review. He tore up another lousy evaluation. And he sat sullen and silent when his supervisors urged him to shape up.

But Willie Woods, accused of killing four of his bosses, received no discipline harsher than a written reprimand and his supervisors never recognized the danger signs.

Under the discipline system required by the city’s Civil Service system, supervisors must give wayward employees several chances to improve before handing them pink slips. Poor workers are usually warned, counseled, reprimanded with a formal “notice to correct deficiency”--and only then suspended or discharged. Supervisors can skip steps and promptly fire employees only for the most serious misconduct, such as stealing public property or punching a colleague.

Woods never went that far. So neither did his supervisors.

They never suspected that Woods’ stormy tantrums and wretched silences would slide into real violence. He was not about to be fired. So they did not dream that Woods would shoot four senior colleagues with a semiautomatic pistol in the hallways of the cavernous C. Erwin Piper Technical Center as he is charged with doing on July 19.

As they buried their slain colleagues last week, city employees asked: “Why?”

And they wondered whether they should have--or could have--guessed that Woods’ disgruntled resentment would flare into deadly rage and whether increasing stress at the workplace heightens the likelihood of random acts of violence.

“I’ve discussed this with dozens and dozens of people,” said Randall C. Bacon, head of the General Services Department where Woods worked for 12 years as a radio repairman. “All the discussions I’ve had end up in the same place: You just never know. . . . You just can’t predict.”

Bacon had circulated a policy on workplace violence barely two months before the slayings. The policy calls for investigating all threatening behavior and reporting it to supervisors. And in a June newsletter to employees, the department listed 11 warning signs that a worker may erupt in violence.

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Woods reportedly met many of the criteria--including poor reaction to discipline, insubordination, withdrawn behavior and a personal relationship that neighbors described as stormy. Still, his supervisors failed to refer Woods to the city’s free employee counseling program, as recommended in the newsletter.

“We’re going to be reviewing the policy and other things we do, including the whole process of discipline,” Bacon said.

Among the questions: Whether supervisors are reprimanding problem employees properly, and whether they are referring possible troublemakers to counseling quickly enough.

As the review proceeds, the General Services Department will begin teaching supervisors how to identify and respond to potentially hostile employees--in training sessions planned long before the fatal shootings.

In the Woods case, supervisors apparently had several clues that the 42-year-old radio repairman might turn violent.

By all accounts, Woods, who earned $44,000 a year, was a competent technician who earned solid performance reviews and a promotion during his first decade on the city work force. But nearly two years ago, about the time he bought a $172,000 Upland house with four bedrooms and a pool, Woods received his first negative evaluation.

Bacon would not divulge details, but said “the inadequate performance was not a judgment call by his supervisor.” Woods’ work installing and repairing police radios, he said, “was well below [city] standards.”

As required by Civil Service protocol, Woods’ supervisors told him what was wrong. They advised him to buckle down. Apparently, he refused. So the warnings continued. He received two poor annual performance reviews, about half a dozen informal verbal reprimands and one written rebuke.

The repeated scoldings seemed to irritate rather than inspire.

“He began to think they were picking on him,” said James Earl Jackson, business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 45.

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As Woods’ union representative, Jackson heard his complaints. “From what I gather, he resented authority,” Jackson said. “He seemed to think it was their fault, not his.”

The authority Woods so resented included supervisors Neil Carpenter, Anthony Gain, Marty Wakefield and James Walton, all killed in the rampage.

Although Woods seemed to fear that he would be fired, none of the four victims planned such action. The repairman may have faced several days suspension without pay for his insubordination and poor work, but he was not in danger of being terminated, Bacon said.

“In the private sector, if you have an employee who refuses to talk with you about performance issues, that employee is not going to be around very long,” he added. “But in the public sector, the burden of proof is on supervisors and management [to show] that this employee should go.”

Under Civil Service rules, it is nearly impossible to fire a worker just for talking back, or for unprofessional outbursts such as kicking a chair, city officials said.

Employees can challenge punishments more severe than a five-day suspension to the Civil Service Commission. Each year, commissioners hear about 110 appeals--and demand that supervisors provide cogent explanations for their disciplinary decisions.

The prospect of justifying each punishment before the five-member board “makes supervisors aware that you need to have all your ducks in a row,” said Phil Henning, the commission’s assistant general manager.”

Bacon, a 35-year veteran of the city work force, added: “I would certainly say . . . that the Civil Service system makes it much more difficult to deal with a [problem] employee.”

To help supervisors mete out appropriate reprimands, the personnel department provides a fat book of disciplinary guidelines. But individual supervisors have considerable discretion.

An employee caught at work with a dangerous weapon, for example, can receive anything from a mild verbal warning to a 30-day suspension without pay for a first offense.

Two weeks ago, an equipment mechanic for the Fire Department was suspended for 10 days for repeatedly and belligerently refusing to acknowledge critical performance reviews--the same type of offense for which Woods received a verbal rebuke.

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Bacon said he believed that Woods’ supervisors were planning to give him a second written reprimand several weeks ago. Woods may have heard about the disciplinary action and reacted with deadly fury, he said.

Critics may snipe at Woods’ supervisors for moving slowly to crack down on his heated outbursts. But Henning contended, “it doesn’t sound to me like the supervisors missed the boat. If you heard someone ripped up their evaluation, I don’t think the next thing you’d expect would be gunshots.”

Indeed, Bacon said, any criticism of the department’s action is “20/20 hindsight.”

“All of us work with people that we think are a little odd and are negative in terms of the way they react to things,” he said. “But that does not necessarily mean that that person needs to be fired.”

Workplace violence is difficult to predict, psychologist Craig Hands said.

A therapist who counsels stressed-out employees, Hands said supervisors should be wary of impulsive, depressed workers, especially if they are loaded down with worries on and off the job. Other, more quirky factors can also help predict violence--pent-up rage may burst into bloodshed during uncomfortably hot weather, or after an aggressive bout of competitive sports.

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Rather than abandon such on-the-edge employees, Hands recommends helping them work through their problems, perhaps with professional counseling.

“You can’t just turn your back on an employee, even if he has performance problems,” said Bill Eagleson, an assistant chief in the city’s personnel division.

Moreover, increasing stress at the workplace is also a consideration, Bacon said.

“The communications division has always been overloaded with work and in addition to that, we’re downsizing,” Bacon said. “I am sure that the workers have a certain kind of fear about losing their jobs.

Woods may have been one of those workers.

According to Lt. William Hall, Woods shot Carpenter and Walton to death on the ground floor, then walked upstairs to kill Wakefield and Gain. He dropped the pistol and surrendered to police outside Piper Tech.

Woods is scheduled to be arraigned Aug. 3. “We are doing our best to see the case is handled swiftly so the victims’ families can get some closure,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Sally Thomas.

But closure seemed far off last week. Hundreds of the victims’ colleagues attended their funerals, breaking off work midmorning to file somberly into churches and cemeteries.

“We pray for these four mowed down by this human folly,” Father Paul M. Caporali said during a memorial service for Gain, at age 78 the city’s most senior employee.

As the pallbearers filed by with Gain’s casket, one also carried a framed, somewhat faded, photo of the victim in his shirt sleeves and tie--sitting at his desk at work, where he spent so much of his life.

“Everyone’s been thinking about how this could have been avoided,” Eagleson said. “I’m not so sure it could have.”