This week, a man (40) was sentenced in Hordaland district court to the most severe punishment in the law. The man killed Nav employee Marianne Amundsen and tried to kill her colleague during a user call at Nav Årstad on 20 September 2021. The man will appeal the sentence of 21 years in custody, with a minimum term of 14 years. MURDER: The conversation room where the man attacked was located in the hallway, right next to the public reception at Nav Årstad. Photo: The police In the wake of the serious incident, questions were raised as to whether the safety of employees at Nav was good enough before the murder took place. And the Norwegian Labor Inspection Authority found several breaches of the regulations when they supervised Nav Årstad in the same autumn after the murder. One of the main findings was that the office at Danmarksplass in Bergen has not “prevented violence and threats well enough”. Users with weapons were not risk-assessed The public report was sketchy and did not give many details about what was not good enough. news has now gained access to an unedited version of the report which goes into more detail about the flawed risk assessment. “Some users bring weapons into the public reception. The danger of users bringing weapons into the public reception is not identified as a danger in the survey, and thus not risk assessed”, writes the Norwegian Labor Inspectorate and concludes further down that the surveys and risk assessments at the office were deficient. According to the Norwegian Working Environment Authority, there has been a breach of the Working Environment Act section 3-1 and 4-1. KNIFE IN THE RACK: In this rucksack, which the killer had on his back when he came to Nav Årstad last autumn, there was a large chef’s knife. Photo: The police – Not appropriate Nav Årstad in Bergen is an office where several employees have received threats and feel unsafe outside the workplace as well, according to the Labor Inspectorate. To strengthen security, there were scales in the public reception. news has asked Nav director Hans Christian Holte why Nav has nevertheless not considered it a danger that users bring weapons to the office. – We have a general assessment of safety which must take many different perspectives. What is at the core of our insurance work is to combine looking after our employees, but also being able to be there for the people who need us. We are the last safety net in society, Holte replies. – Physical security measures must be seen in context and well balanced. Our experience is that simply emphasizing physical security is not appropriate. – But shouldn’t Nav Årstad have assessed the risk of users bringing weapons into the office? – We will look at the findings we have after the investigations and legal process that have taken place. It will go into our learning, together with the safety work we have been working on for the past year and which we will soon complete, Holte replies. See the full answer to the Nav director Why hasn’t Nav identified users with weapons as a danger, when you clearly know that some users carry them? – We have a general assessment of safety which must take many different perspectives. What is at the core of our security work is to combine looking after our employees with also being able to be there for the people who need us. We are the last safety net in society. So what we are looking at is, among other things, good contact with the police and the health authorities, to see if there is an exchange of information that way. And it is not least the important preventive work, which is about getting to know the people who come to us as well as possible and having that contact well. – And then of course there are physical security measures, but it must be seen in context. And it must be well balanced. And that is how we generally think in our security work; we have to use many different tools. Our experience is that simply emphasizing physical security is not appropriate, we need to see this in a broader perspective, says Holte. But this was a man who was not assessed as being dangerous, but still came into the office with a weapon. Couldn’t a solution with metal detectors prevent what happened? – It is difficult to speculate on how specific situations could have been avoided. The most important thing for me as Nav director is to work hard and well so that we, as an organisation, can handle different types of security risks as best as possible. That is the constructive path forward for us now. In retrospect, and bearing in mind that the Norwegian Labor Inspection Authority has found breaches of the legislation in its inspection; Shouldn’t Nav Årstad have assessed the risk of users bringing weapons into the office? – We will look at the findings we have, after the investigations and the legal process that followed the incident at Nav Årstad. It will go into our learning, together with the security work we have been working on for the past year, which we will soon complete. NAV DIRECTOR: Hans Christian Holte. Photo: Torstein Bøe / NTB Renovation of the Nav office in Bergen has subsequently been completely rebuilt. Glass panels and fixed chairs in the conference room are in place. The relatives of Marianne Amundsen are considering a lawsuit against Nav. Among other things, they pointed out that the furniture inside the room was not as it used to be. Previously, the desks stood against the wall between the two doors, to create a barrier and ensure a quick escape for the employees out the door if something were to happen. WAS MOVED: The murderer had his place in the black chair on the left in the picture, while Marianne Amundsen sat in the black chair on the right side of the desk. The Nav colleague who survived the assassination attempt sat in the blue chair. Graphics: The police But during the pandemic and before the murder, the desks were moved to the other wall, so that there was a passage in front of the doors. – She was trapped in the room, said colleague Ida Aulin in court. She sat closest to the door, was stabbed three times in the back, but got out. Relatives: – Outrageous disclaimer of responsibility news has presented the Nav director’s comments on the lack of risk assessment of users with weapons to Marianne Amundsen’s survivors. Pål Gerhard Olsen, who is Amundsen’s older brother, says Holte’s reply joins the ranks of “empty, hollow and completely non-committal statements” from the Nav director. . – He does not answer the completely timely question about why they had not practiced a scenario where a user brings a weapon into the public reception, even though it is explicitly described as completely normal by the employees, writes Olsen in an e-mail to news. RELATED: Pål Gerhard Olsen is the brother of the murdered Nav employee Marianne Amundsen. Photo: Julianne Bråten Mossing / news – For us as relatives, this is an outrageous disclaimer of responsibility. I just have to repeat what I said in court: Nav, central and local, has from the first day after the murder added stones to our burden as relatives and survivors. By being more concerned with back cover and their own positions in the Nav system than doing Marianne justice by taking the consequences of their own fatal misjudgments, Olsen insisted. – The verdict that came this week states that Marianne Amundsen had no opportunity to escape the man who took her life. The security measures we had in Nav were not enough to save Marianne Amundsen’s life and prevent the attack on Ida Aulin. I am very sorry about that and that is what I regret, says Nav director Hans Christian Holte to news.
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Knew that Nav users had weapons, but did not include it in the risk assessment – news Vestland
