That’s it? $14,502 fine will hardly serve as a deterrent after the Boise mall shooting

Fourteen-thousand, five-hundred two dollars.

That’s the fine imposed by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration against Professional Security Consultants Inc., a Los Angeles-based company that provided security for the Boise Towne Square at the time of a deadly shooting last year.

Jacob Bergquist on Oct. 25 killed 26-year-old security guard Jo Acker, of Caldwell, and 49-year-old customer Roberto Padilla Arguelles in the shooting. Bergquist later died following a shootout with police.

A federal investigation into the labor practices of Professional Security Consultants found that the company repeatedly exposed its employees at the Boise mall to workplace violence hazards and failed to follow its own procedures for interacting with armed individuals to enforce the mall’s code of conduct.

OSHA cited the company for not instituting controls to protect security workers from hazards likely to cause death or serious physical harm.

“Professional Security Consultants’ policies and procedures did not effectively address the risk of gun violence, a recognized hazard in the security services industry,” said OSHA Area Director David Kearns in Boise. “Every worker has the right to a safe and healthful workplace. This employer must provide enhanced safeguards and training to ensure workers have the knowledge and tools to better protect themselves against assault.”

For that, the agency proposed a penalty of $14,502.

That’s it.

A fine of $14,502 is way too light of a penalty for such a serious offense.

The warning signs leading up to the deadly shooting were there.

According to Ada County Emergency Dispatch records obtained by the Idaho Statesman through a public records request, police received calls about Bergquist three times in the span of a few months leading up to the fatal mall shooting — including once because he had a gun holstered on his hip and two ammunition magazines “strapped to his back” at the mall, which does not allow firearms on the premises.

The other two incidents were at other area businesses.

Unfortunately, $14,502 is the maximum penalty allowed for OSHA for a violation that’s considered “serious.”

This amount hardly serves as motivation for a company to conduct proper training and provide proper resources to deal with these types of situations.

Professional Security Consultants Inc. is not a small company. It provides officers for shopping malls, schools, hotels, hospitals, office buildings and gated communities, and provides security consulting, executive protection and event planning services. It employs about 2,900 workers.

Professional Security Consultants, as well as others just like it, could look at a $14,502 fine simply as a cost of doing business. They could even view it as a smart investment to not provide proper training and resources. It makes more financial sense for a company to forgo training and its associated costs and just accept a $14,502 fine.

The U.S. House Committee on Education and Labor last year proposed substantial increases to OSHA fines as part of the budget resolution for fiscal year 2022, but the proposal went nowhere.

The committee’s portion of the Build Back Better Act sought to raise OSHA’s minimum fine for willful or repeated violations to $50,000 and the maximum to $700,000.

Serious and failure-to-abate violations would have moved to a maximum of $700,000.

Of course, the proposal devolved into partisanship.

U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-South Carolina, said Democrats “want to put private business out of business.”

Committee chair Bobby Scott, D-Virginia, said in a press release that the committee was “updating the dollar amount of worker safety penalties so they are large enough to serve as an adequate deterrent.”

In its citation, OSHA provided Professional Security Consultants Inc. with “recommendations” for developing a workplace violence prevention program. They include training for security personnel; increased high-visibility signage; and procedures for identifying, tracking and communicating information on high-risk people, persons of interest and habitual offenders of the mall’s firearms prohibition.

Why just toothless “recommendations”? Why not mandate a workplace violence prevention program?

“Recommendations” are just that — recommendations.

The light penalty and recommendations dishonor the victims of the shooting, Jo Acker and Roberto Padilla Arguelles.

With such light consequences, we find little reason to expect companies like Professional Security Consultants to change the way they do business. With such a small fine, we don’t expect them to institute measures that would serve as a better deterrent to something like the Boise mall shooting. In fact, if history is any indication, you can count on another horrible incident like this.

And a proverbial slap on the wrist from OSHA won’t do anything to help.