Rage In The Workplace

Copycat Incidents Are Common

(CBS)  In Atlanta this summer it was a day-trader upset over big stock losses. In Seattle, they're not sure yet, but it looks like another case of rage in the workplace. While in Honolulu, coworkers still can't figure it out. The suspect there, they say, was one of the nicest guys in the office.

If there's one common thread in workplace violence in the U.S., experts say it's that there's really no discernable pattern at all, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Stewart.

About 100 Americans are murdered by coworkers or customers every year. But when government and safety experts recently tried to profile the "average" workplace killer, they came up with very little.

They did find that these kinds of attacks are:

• "three to four times more likely to occur in a government or quasi-governmental organization," as opposed to a private firm;
  
  
• that "middle-aged white men" are the most likely suspects, as well as the most likely victims;
  
• and that companies going through a period of "downsizing" are most susceptible.

And if you've noticed that these shootings seem to come in clusters -- like the incident in Alabama, where a man killed three people at two companies where he'd worked, only days after the Atlanta rampage -- you're not alone. Copycat slayings in the workplace are commonplace, police say. Seeing or reading of rage elsewhere may tend to prompt violence in someone already contemplating it, say experts.

Finally, there appears to be no pattern either in how these things end. In one-third of the ten most recent workplace shootings, the suspects ended it by shooting themselves. In another third, they surrendered. The rest died while resisting arrest.