Man Sentenced for Threatening a Shooting at New York Veterans Administration Medical Center
Failure to have a comprehensive Emergency Preparedness Plan in effect for dealing with serious threats like a mass shooter may result in substandard quality of care and the submission of false claims
Compliance Perspective – Emergency Preparedness
Policies/Procedures: The Compliance and Ethics Officer with the Administrator, the Risk Manager, and a representative from the Community’s Emergency First Responder Team will review the policies and procedures involving the Emergency Preparedness Plan for dealing with mass shooting threats.
Training: The Compliance and Ethics Officer, as well as every department head, will ensure that staff are trained regarding Emergency Preparedness Plan protocols for responding to mass shooting threats.
Audit: The Compliance and Ethics Officer should personally conduct periodic drills to test, evaluate, and ensure that all staff are competent and effective in carrying out Emergency Preparedness Plan protocols for responding to mass shooting threats.
ACTIVE SHOOTER PREVENTION AND RESPONSE
A New York man, Robert J. Seifert, was sentenced to time served (about 12.5 months in jail), as well as 3 years of supervised release, for threatening to commit a mass shooting at the Stratton VA Medical Center in Albany in June 2016.
Seifert pled guilty to a charge of making an interstate threat to injure another. He admitted that on June 15, 2016, he made a phone call to a Veterans’ Crisis Line operator in Portland, Oregon, in which he stated, “I got an Uzi, and I wanna kill everybody at the Albany VA.” “Watch what happens when I get to the Albany VA with my Uzi, and I start shooting people up,” and “I’m going to [expletive] kill everybody there.”
