Post-Office Violence A Myth, Experts Say -- Like Many Workplace Incidents, Yesterday's Postal Shooting Was Personal, Not Job-Related

MIAMI BEACH, Fla. - Yesterday's multiple shooting at a Miami Beach post office by an employee seems to give credence to the popular belief that postal workers are more likely to start shooting than any other kind of employee.

Wrong, say experts on workplace violence.

Postal clerk Jesus Tamayo, 64, working behind the front counter, walked to his car and returned with a gun to shoot his ex-wife, Manuela Acosta, 62, and her friend, Mirna Mendoza, 55, as they stood in line with 15 other people, police said. He then walked back outside and killed himself.

The women were in critical condition after surgery. Each had been shot once in the abdomen.

"The notion that the U.S. Postal Service is more violent than any other company is actually a social myth. The objective evidence shows that it's safer than most workplaces," says Dennis Johnson, a clinical psychologist in Stuart, Fla., and co-author of "Breaking Point: The Workplace Violence Epidemic and What do to About It."

Says Roy Betts, the Postal Service's national spokesman: "It's an unfair stereotype of the more than 800,000 people who work for the U.S. Postal Service."

"A lot of (incidents there) have involved multiple fatalities, so they tend to get a lot more media coverage, which leads to the perception that they occur more often in post offices than other places," says Dr. Theodore Feldmann, a forensic psychiatrist and professor at the University of Louisville.

According to a study Feldmann has conducted of 700 violent workplace incidents since 1995, employees are more likely to "go postal" at a factory or plant than at the post office: Factory workers make up 30 percent of employees involved in threats or violence. Government facilities (which include post offices) were second, at 24.5 percent. Business offices were third, at 10.5 percent.

And a 1994 report by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health - the most recent data available - finds that the fatality rate for postal workers was actually 2.5 times lower than for all workers combined. (Most postal-worker deaths were attributed to car accidents).

And it's also a fallacy to characterize violent employees - postal or otherwise - as people who simply couldn't take one more complaint and snapped, Feldmann says.

As in yesterday's shooting, about 20 percent of cases of on-the-job violence are attributed to personal or domestic disputes, he says.