was beaten to death by a mob at a McDonald‘s in February 2012, and his girlfriend, Lauren Bailey Crisp, 19, who died in a traffic accident in a futile attempt to bring Ward to a hospital. The families of both teens sued McDonald‘s, claiming the restaurant chain didn‘t protect patrons at its College Station, Texas, location even though local police had been repeatedly called to break up fights there. A Bryan, Texas, state court jury yesterday awarded the Ward family $16 million and the Crisp family $11 million.
The full jury verdict is unlikely to withstand appeals, given the conservative nature of the county where the incident happened and Texas appellate courts, said Houston attorney David Berg, who isn‘t involved in the case. ―The jury turned into a lynch mob,‖ said Berg, the author of ―The Trial Lawyer -- What it Takes To Win.‖
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SAFETY What Dr. Deming Can Teach Us About Safety Management
Dr. W. Edwards Deming‘s teachings changed the way that organizations view quality, management and leadership. His concepts can have a profound impact on safety performance as well. Deming's approach will help management understand why the majority of employee accidents are caused by the system itself – not by the action(s) of individuals. Management also will stop focusing on the outcomes of the system, because it's not as effective as working on the causes of the outcomes. We need to go far beyond common sense and seek to understand common causes – and fix the system instead of the worker.
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Safety Culture: The Second Level of Leading Indicators
The quest to drive an organizations safety performance begins with developing metrics that will drive safety. These metrics can comprise the first level of a balanced scorecard for safety. They can be measured separately and viewed as part of a safety dashboard, or weighted and combined into a single score, or both. Measuring these activities indicates if your organization is truly working your safety plan. The metrics that follow can tell if your plan is working and having the desired results.
Second-level metrics are the result of the first-level activities, which begin to improve the safety culture. For our purposes, we are going to define "culture" as what the group of employees shares and agrees on, i.e. concepts, perceptions and competencies. The most
prevalent definitions simply define culture as ―common practice. ―
The basic premise here is that culture is not "the way we do things around here," but the influences that cause us to do things in that certain way.
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SCHOOL VIOLENCE Arming Teachers Disarms Planning
The question is, should teachers be armed and allowed to bring firearms into a school? Firestorm CEO and co- founder, Harry Rhulen, shed light on the topic. Can it (armed teachers) be done? Yes, it can be done, ―but it can only be done with a tremendous amount of discipline, training, planning and education.‖ Unfortunately, this is not the approach Firestorm has seen evolving. Instead of encouraging teachers to ―pack heat,‖ the approach Firestorm takes is the
PREDICT.PLAN.PERFORM.® strategy. Schools that are jumping into the armed teacher approach are skipping the
PREDICT.PLAN. stage.
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School Shooters Are Not Just “Ordinary Kids:” Will Our Past Determine Our Future?
If we do not make changes, then our past will determine our future and we will continue to have school shootings. For many school shooters who plan mass murder, their primary goal is suicide. A 2002 Secret Service report found that of the 41 school shooters studied, many had histories of suicidal ideations and attempts and suffered from depression. There are clear indications that school shooters are not ordinary kids but instead have severe mental health problems. It is essential for schools and communities to improve their ability to detect students with mental health problems and to provide appropriate treatment and interventions.
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Schools Face New Wave of Violent Threats Sent by Social Media and Other Electronic Means
According to a new study, more than one-third of violent threats to schools since the beginning of this school year were delivered by social media, email, text messaging, and other electronic forms. While the vast majority of school threats are empty, police are taking no chances and respond to every call. This is costing taxpayersmoney and raising the anxiety level of millions of children and their parents. Too many school and safety officials make knee-jerk reactions to threats by prematurely evacuating and/or closing schools. Schools
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