Enhancing Security for Public Employees
Executive Summary
The purpose of this short paper is to inform policy makers of possible ways to address growing threats against public employees. We make the following recommendations and findings:
Threats against public employees are growing and merit a comprehensive and effective response.
We must take this threat seriously and match the threats with processes, programs, and laws that will reduce and prevent risks, deter bad actors, and apprehend and punish those who break the law while targeting public employees.
Redaction of employee address is an ineffective response and amounts to security theater while doing real harm to the many beneficial uses of public records for public oversight and everyday transactions.
Existing all-threat management techniques provide an excellent methodology to identify threats and countermeasures worth pursuing.
Current threat assessments have not fully accounted for new threats and threat targets (e.g., extended family members and staff) and venues (such as homes and other locations away from the traditional workplace).
There are existing laws and models that can provide excellent insights into how to address these threats.
Current federal and state laws need to be reviewed and better applied to this risk and new laws may be needed to address the new and emerging issues.
We lack any solid evidence that informational obscurity on addresses will deter the determined who have the capacity for violence and harmful behavior.
The times demand and public employees deserve a more complete set of policies and programs to enhance public employee safety that goes beyond the single, weak, and ineffective concept of address redaction to a more ‘security-in-depth’ approach.
