The deadly shooting at a New York City high-rise office building Monday night raises new questions for CEOs and businesses as they look to keep their workforces safe from violent criminals.
The Monday night shooting at 345 Park Ave. claimed the lives of four victims after the shooter entered the building, which is home to the headquarters of the NFL, investment firm Blackstone and real estate company Rudin Management, along with an office for accounting firm KPMG. One of the victims was an NYPD officer.
The shooter, identified as Shane Tamura, exited a double-parked vehicle, walked across the plaza and entered the building, where he opened fire in the lobby. He then continued his shooting spree on the upper floors after he used the elevator in what was reportedly an effort to reach the NFL’s offices before he shot himself.
The killings at an office building in Midtown Manhattan follow the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City less than a year ago. Thompson was killed while in the city for the company’s annual investor day, and prosecutors have argued his accused assassin, Luigi Mangione, intentionally targeted Thompson due to his status as the CEO of a major health insurance company.
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Efforts by armed assailants to target office buildings or executives heading to public events have made corporate security a more prominent issue for leaders as threats evolve.
James Gagliano, a retired FBI supervisory special agent and nationally recognized law enforcement analyst, told FOX Business in an interview, “With the political bifurcation right now, the divisiveness, some of the political and ideological acts that have been perpetrated, these guys are becoming, more and more, targets.”
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Gagliano said years of working with SWAT and the FBI’s hostage rescue team as well as working on security details for attorneys general and FBI directors underscored the reality that criminals who are willing to die in the course of committing an act of violence make it impossible to fully guarantee people’s safety.
“There’s an old saying in the business, ‘If you’re willing to die in the process, there doesn’t exist a person on the planet that you can guarantee security for 100%.’ You can’t guarantee it with the president as we’ve seen,” Gagliano referring to the four presidential assassinations and the two attempts on the life of President Donald Trump during his campaign last year.
“What you try to do is you try to make it as difficult as possible, as layered and with as much deterrent effect as possible, because bad guys, criminals and terrorists, or whatever their evil pursuit is, they’re like water. They take the path of least resistance,” he explained.
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Gagliano said companies are likely to reevaluate their security postures in terms of the presence of guards inside and outside of entrances, and advance planning for executives when they travel and how they get to their destinations.
He also noted that the healthcare industry has responded to the assassination of the United Healthcare CEO with some simple measures, such as taking biographical pictures of corporate leaders off company websites and likely changes to security arrangements.
“Obviously, in the healthcare industry, this has become a major issue, and I guarantee you all the other companies just like United Healthcare have changed their strategies. I mean, they’ve taken pictures of their executives off some of their websites, and I’m sure that their security posture with their folks is much different now,” Gagliano said.
“This is something that we’re all going to be grappling with. And this is another example of that fine line between infringing upon civil liberties and freedoms and, at the same time, keeping people safe.”
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