LONE WOLF PREYS
WHEN THE
Countering a lone wolf attack is not easy, but there are steps to take to diffuse such events. By R.V. Baugus
- launched in October, one of the main reasons he endorses for the safe- ty and security protocols for the convention center world is to combat the proliferation of lone wolf attacks. “It is a concern,” Mayne says. “We are seeing more and more of these types of attacks.” The numbers don’t lie. According to the American Lone Wolf Ter-
rorism Database, the number of all known American lone wolf attacks - ther, according to the same database, the number killed was none in the 1950s to 115 in the current decade. Convention centers typically have more entrance points than other
types of public assembly venues. Through the years these venues have been sites of protests and demonstrations but thankfully have not been lone wolf or lone-wolf terrorist is someone who prepares and commits violent acts alone, outside of any command structure and without ma- or motivated by the ideology and beliefs of an external group, and may act in support of such a group. “These are people who are going to act, generally, without direc- tion,” says Kevin Mattingly, deputy director of the Phoenix Conven- tion Center and an instructor at IAVM’s Academy for Venue Safety & of someone. They may have prepared themselves because they feel like they’re going to act someday, but as far as predicting when they’re is someone who acts unilaterally or alone. That’s why we call them that. You can have someone who is radicalized and just living their life below the surface and then you don’t know what might trigger their decision to act out.” The lone wolf has been lurking and stalking far too often in recent
years. Some try to blend in to the crowd they are attacking, to a degree.
On July 12, 2012, gunman James Holmes shot and killed 12 people at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, while dressed in attire from one of the characters of The Dark Knight Rises movie. On June 17, 2015, gunman Dylann Roof joined a Wednesday night
22 Facility Manager Magazine
Charleston, South Carolina, before killing nine worshipers. On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people inside
Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. He was reported to have attended the club previously and was known to some employees. A lone wolf must be described as one person, but in the case of
Tsarnaev and Tamarlen Tsarnaev were responsible for killing three civilians when two bombs exploded about 12 seconds apart near the against deadly police violence. There are of course similarities in the above in the sense that all
Then, there are the dissimilarities of the triggers and impulses that led to the actual actions. “Something motivates them to act out,” Mattingly said. “You go to
place up [during an event depicting various drawings of the prophet Muhammad]. You can say that their motivation was to defend their religion, from their point of view. You look at the guy in Dallas who violence against African Americans. “What this tells us is that any number of hot-button social, political,
or religious issues could be what tips the scale for one of these people and causes them to act out. If we agree that’s the case, then it means that we have to broaden our scope of awareness beyond mere religious motivations.” Mattingly says that such lone wolf attacks do not relate so much to “We have an open and inclusive society,” he says. “Many of these people attack at their own places of employment (such as the San Ber- nadino shooting). They’re able to walk in the front door. They don’t “We have a society where you can buy a ticket or you can register
for an event. You can drive up to the front door. So, there is no need to know what the tipping point might be.” The ability to track such individuals before they rampage is some-
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