Agency Shooting Shows Access Can Have a Price

A man walks into a government office with a gun and a grudge. Shots are fired, someone is dead.

It happened in Riverside last month and in Washington, D.C. this summer. On Monday, the scene of the crime was the Orange County Department of Education.

Such violent incidents underscore the struggle public agencies face in attempting to protect employees while remaining open government institutions.

“You have this obvious conflict between access and participation vs. security,” said Ron Loveridge, the Riverside mayor who was among six people shot Oct. 6 when a postal worker with a pistol opened fire in a City Council conference room.

The drama in Costa Mesa, which ended when a police sniper killed disgruntled parent Michael P. Generakos, also spotlights the difficulty of knowing whether a disruptive troublemaker, who is guaranteed free speech, is about to metamorphose into a gun-toting monster.

City councils, school boards and other government bodies often contend with angry and abusive constituents who rant at public hearings and show up at offices demanding answers. But few verbal assaults turn into physical attacks.

In the case of Generakos, school officials took his threats seriously--especially when he spoke of his gun. They repeatedly reported to police his menacing phone calls. They posted guards at school board meetings, where the Lakewood father would rail against educators about the way they treated his deaf son. Employees had even received training on how to deal with workplace violence, something experts said is important for all businesses.

But it didn’t stop Generakos from walking into the Costa Mesa office and taking two administrators hostage.

“You can’t do a hell of a lot because this is a society that believes in free will and gun carrying, and we’re not willing to do anything about it,” said Malcolm Klein, a USC sociology professor.

In recent years, government officials have beefed up security and reduced public access--to the lament of some who say such “security architecture” goes against the principle of open government.

When Orange County supervisors received death threats after the 1994 bankruptcy, county officials redesigned the Hall of Administration, adding walls, barriers and locked doors to areas where the public once freely roamed.

“It’s sad. It’s almost alien to the democratic process to limit access,” said Supervisor William G. Steiner. “But there is a greater preoccupation with safety than there once was.”

Steiner said his office also fielded complaints from Generakos about his deaf son. “I feel we could have had the same situation at the county,” he said. “It makes you feel so vulnerable.”

Any building can be a target for people who feel they’ve been wronged. In 1993, for example, a 40-year-old transient shot three doctors at the Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center emergency room. In the aftermath, the Legislature passed a law requiring hospitals to update security plans.

But even security can’t stop a determined gunman. In Washington this summer a man with a history of mental problems burst past a weapons detector at the Capitol and shot and killed two officers.

Still, many of those who suddenly erupt don’t have a history of crime or mental illness. Twenty years ago this week, Dan White--one-time San Francisco policeman, fireman and county supervisor--shot to death Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.

In a society where about 45% of households have at least one gun, “we’re going to continue to see more and more of these tragedies where people act out their anger by using a gun, simply because the gun is available,” said Luis Tolley, western director of Handgun Control Inc. A third of those guns are loaded and unlocked at all times, he said.

Others, however, question whether handgun control would make a difference. Park Dietz, a psychiatrist who consults with companies to minimize workplace violence, said banning guns won’t prevent these incidents. “Not in the next century anyway. Guns aren’t the only weapons, and there are more than enough to last the people who want them for many generations to come,” he said.

Guns immediately up the ante in any confrontation.

“What would have been a shouting match or fistfight now becomes life threatening,” said David Spiegel, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University. “There has always been organized violence in human history. But with guns, it can just be one person with a twisted point of view and you’ve got the power to inflict terrible harm.”

Experts agree there are a number of warning signs that someone may be about to explode. The top three, Dietz said, are someone who talks about killing himself or others; a person who makes threats, veiled or direct; and someone who does not make sense when speaking publicly and may be having delusions.

But they are harder to spot in someone like Generakos, whose anger was focused at the school district, than they would be in a co-worker whose rage was focused at the boss, Dietz said. “With nonemployees, it’s hit or miss, whatever information they volunteer,” he said.

Indeed, government officials often endure personal attacks and verbal threats from constituents angry over land-use decisions, parking tickets or service fees. But they rarely lead to violence.

A few years ago, a disgruntled speaker threatened to put a hex on the Newport Beach City Council. A gadfly once brandished a toy water gun during a Laguna Beach council meeting. In one highly publicized case last year, several developers and government officials in Orange County received packages containing bullets in what was believed to be a protest against building projects on Indian burial sites.

Although the Orange County Department of Education seemed to spot Generakos’ potential for violence by adding security at its meetings, getting a restraining order might have made things worse. “Restraining orders almost always are risk elevators,” Dietz said.

The key, he said, is to make people with the grievance think they are receiving some satisfaction. “That can take some real creativity, and sometimes there’s no way to do it,” Dietz said.

At the education department, some employees remain wary of heightened safety measures, despite this week’s violence.

“This is a public facility,” said Bill Habermehl, associate superintendent for educational services. “We literally have hundreds of people, teachers, administrators, parents and citizens who come [here]. So we tried to keep a very customer friendly feel to it.”

Even after the shooting, the district probably will not install a metal detector, he said.

Governments continue to struggle over how much protection is too much, and will it scare away people with legitimate business.

After the Washington shooting, officials increased monitoring of visitors and told employees to be more watchful.

Riverside city offices had little security before the shootings. So far the only change has been to have at least one uniformed police officer at council meetings. A council committee is discussing security, and it is expected to make a recommendation in January.

“My premise is I cannot get up in the morning and expect someone will shoot me during the day,” said Mayor Loveridge. “I have to regard it as an aberration. I can’t live my life like that.”

Also contributing to this report was Times staff writer Phil Willon.

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Gunfire In the Workplace

Acts of violence in the workplace have become alarmingly frequent over the last five years. Here are recent incidents of deadly rage in Southern California workplaces:

Oct. 6, 1998: Joseph Neale, a dismissed recreation department chess coach, allegedly opens fire in a Riverside City Hall conference room, wounding six people, including the mayor and two City Council members before he is shot and wounded by police in a gun battle.

April 22, 1998: Los Angeles International Airport agricultural inspector David Rothman allegedly shoots and kills three U.S. Department of Agriculture employees during a meeting in Inglewood about work schedules.

Dec. 18, 1997: Former state employee Arturo Reyes Torres opens fire with an assault rifle at a Caltrans maintenance yard in Orange, gunning down four people and injuring two before police kill him in a shootout.

June 13, 1997: Soon Byung Park returns to the Santa Fe Springs embroidery firm from which he had recently been fired, shooting and critically wounding his former business partner before killing the man’s sister and finally turning the gun on himself.

June 5, 1997: Daniel S. Marsden, a quality control inspector who had gotten into an argument, opens fire inside Omni Plastics in Santa Fe Springs, killing two and wounding four employees. After fleeing, he kills himself.

April 17, 1996: Former employee Walter Waddy, fighting for workers’ compensation benefits for four years after suffering a neck injury, allegedly storms into a Hughes Electronics complex in El Segundo, shooting three people and taking a hostage before surrendering to police.

March 5, 1996: Sgt. Jessie A. Quintanilla, angry at his superior officers after his name surfaced in connection with gang activity, shoots and kills a fellow Marine and wounds another at Camp Pendleton. He is later convicted and sentenced to death.

July 19, 1995: Los Angeles city electrician Willie Woods, upset over a poor performance evaluation and fearing he might be fired, hunts down and shoots to death four of his supervisors at the city’s C. Erwin Piper Technical Center downtown. Woods is later sentenced to life in prison.

July 9, 1995: Bruce William Clark, a 22-year veteran of the U.S. Postal Service, shoots and kills his supervisor after an argument at a 24-hour mail processing facility in the City of Industry. Clark is serving a 22-year prison sentence.

March 15, 1994: Ex-employee Tuan Nguyen of Extron Electronics in Santa Fe Springs, who had been dismissed a few weeks earlier for ‘unsatisfactory performance,’ shoots and kills three former co-workers and wounds two before fatally shooting himself.

Dec. 2, 1993: Unemployed computer engineer Alan Winterbourne breaks into the state Employment Development Department office in Oxnard, shooting and killing five employees and wounding four others before being shot to death by police outside another jobs office in Ventura.

Source: Times reports