<p style=”text-align: left;”>Hi all,</p>
I was just contacted by a district who’s dealing with a phoned-in threat left on their voicemail from a member of the public in advance of their local work group meeting. Due to the nature of the language used, they’re concerned about safety for their event and more generally for their staff. We’ve advised them to contact both NRCS (the threat was called in to a federal phone) and local law enforcement. NRCS is drafting a bar letter to prohibit the individual from entering the service center, but the district’s main office is located elsewhere and the local work group event will be held at a local community center. We’ve also advised them to consider remote options for this meeting.

We haven’t dealt with anything like this before, so I’m wondering if anyone else provides guidance to districts about how to respond to irate members of the public or about safety issues more broadly? Particularly in a highly charged political atmosphere, has anyone else had to deal with threats to district staff? Has your agency been able to provide any resources around this issue? We’d like to do some kind of training at the very least, but not sure what that might entail. Beyond that, it feels like we have to just default to whatever security local law enforcement can provide, but I’d welcome any other thoughts or ideas.

Thanks,

Clare