safety is a personal choice, not a corporate one
where’s Touchstone management’s evidence to back their claims? and why hold back information?
Trigger warning: this essay discusses active shooting. This content can be traumatizing and distressing. If you choose not to read this but want to do something about it, the Hollywood Boulders staff are asking you to sign their petition and donate here.
On Sunday, October 22nd, a member of Hollywood Boulders—part of the Touchstone Gyms network—had a text message conversation with another HB member in which he threatened to carry out a mass shooting.
On Wednesday, HB’s staff found out that they had been unwittingly exposed to this potentially devastating threat.
Imagine going to work, not knowing there might be a potential active shooter in your workplace because management and police decided not to inform you. And then you find out about it from Reddit. Wouldn’t you be pissed?
On Thursday, members of Touchstone’s staff published an open letter explaining the situation. Here’s what they said about the texts (trigger warning: violent language):
To put it plainly: we all worked in harm’s way for four days before discovering more information through our own collective inquiry. Based on the hard textual evidence, every single staff member across the SoCal gyms was exposed to a potential active shooter who had given warning to “avoid the gym for a while,” because the member was “strapped” with a weapon and “wanted scalps.” He said “these tourists and lames need to know what war really is,” further elaborating that he has “been way too lenient with all the wannabes here. no mas.” The company management read these warnings from a member who claimed “god has spoken” to him and he “already has a kill order.” They saw the messages that this member “could use the help,” because “it would save from getting chewed out for hospitalizing everyone.” They read the message in which the member verified his intentions, stating that he will “take out the Koreans first so y’all take things more seriously.” When the recipient of the message responded by asking “wdym stay away from the gym? Everything okay?” the member harrowingly replied, “i’ll know soon enough.”
How was the company content to read these messages, only to keep the gym open, wait patiently, and find out what “soon enough” means for a member with a self-proclaimed “kill order” from “god”? When was “soon enough” to notify employees of these warning signs? If something is important enough to tell the police, it’s undeniably important enough to tell your staff, regardless of the panic it may cause. When our lives are at stake, we deserve to know. No exceptions, no justifications, no excuses.
Before going on, read the entire letter.
Read it? Okay, good.
11/1, ten days after the texts were sent, all Touchstone members (myself included) received an email from Touchstone’s CEO:
How is this supposed to alleviate any concerns around safety?
I have three responses to this paragraph:
Because a lot of information has been circulating online, we want to make three facts very clear: (1) no gym was ever directly threatened, (2) there was never an active shooter, (3) the police never deemed this a credible threat. The entire series of events is all related to personal communication between individual members.
First, if the CEO claims “(1) no gym was ever directly threatened” and “(2) there was never an active shooter” as “fact”… where’s your evidence?
And, why wasn’t the staff permitted to read the texts when they demanded it?
From the staff’s open letter:
As soon as we discovered the details of the threat on our own, all staff on site demanded to read the text messages ourselves. We were not given permission to read the texts, and immediately walked out of work.
I’ve noticed that some managers in general hold back sensitive information to prevent staff from feeling anxious. “Let’s just let the dust settle.” If management wanted to prevent any potential anxiety, I’d argue they did quite the opposite: management created more anxiety by not sharing the texts when the staff demanded it.
Again, the staff had the right to know about the texts immediately, regardless of the threat being decided on by the police. Safety is a personal choice. As the letter said, “If something is important enough to tell the police, it’s undeniably important enough to tell your staff, regardless of the panic it may cause. When our lives are at stake, we deserve to know. No exceptions, no justifications, no excuses.”
Second, if “the police didn’t deem this as a credible threat”, what’s their reasoning that this isn’t a credible threat? Because it’s texts between two individual members rather than between the member and the gym? Again, show us your evidence. We need more explanation. The risk of being wrong here is too high.
Third, give the staff what they're asking for. The CEO says “we are working with the staff to ensure they feel safe to return to work so that Hollywood Boulders can resume its regular hours.” They've made it plain and clear:
In response, the remaining staff sent a unanimous, joint letter to the company management, outlining four basic security needs/conditions before we could return with a feeling of genuine safety: 1) successfully intervening through various legal means to prevent the member in question from causing harm; offering emergency mental health resources to the member; 2) installing full-time security and locked key card/buzzer controlled entry doors; 3) creating and sharing a protocol for responding to future threats and notifying staff immediately in such cases; 4) paying Hollywood Boulders staff back-pay and hazard pay for days in which we worked and/or missed in which these security concerns were not adequately addressed.
On Thursday, Touchstone’s management pivoted and agreed to back pay for staff still under employment. But many staff had already quit, and aren’t receiving this back pay or unemployment. For Touchstone to live up to its promises of caring about staff wellbeing, they must consider all staff—current and former—who they put in harm’s way.
I wish management told members, too
Between when the threat was made and when the staff and members found out, a Touchstone Gyms location hosted a community event centered on celebrating Filipino identity. As a co-organizer of this event, it struck me that we were not warned about these threats either, despite management knowing about the texts on Sunday. This was especially alarming considering the person who threatened the shooting specifically called out Koreans as the group he would target first. The US has had a significant increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in the past three years.
Our event organizing team had the right to know if there was even a small chance that we were putting lives at risk. Had we known, we would have canceled it. No-brainer. We feel very lucky that nothing happened.
Other gyms in LA must prioritize safety
After the letter was released, this image was shared around Instagram:
On 11/1, two days after the open letter was shared and after tons of Touchstone members froze their memberships, Stronghold shared on Instagram that they’re waiving their $75 initiation fee for new members.
I wondered, “Is Stronghold doing this to capitalize on new memberships from the tons of climbers freezing their Touchstone memberships? Maybe. Maybe not.”
Turns out Stronghold did not intentionally do this in response to climbers freezing their Touchstone memberships. They planned to do this for a while now. A staff member at Stronghold who I know said that they planned to waive the initiation fee way in advance. Their new Echo Park location is opening soon (December? Pending inspections…). So they planned a sale in November.
Turns out I was wrong.
This wasn’t a deliberate response to Touchstone members cancelling their membership. It was an unfortunate coincidence.
I am curious about how Stronghold and other gyms in LA will move forward after this.
Now that the threatener is banned from Touchstone, how safe is it to climb at other gyms in LA?
How will members’ and staff safety be prioritized?
How can we make sure that the staff and members have the information they need to prioritize their own safety?
The friend of mine who works at Stronghold says that safety is their top priority right now. I’m glad to hear that. I hope that’s the case for other gyms in LA, too.
My four questions to Touchstone’s management
So Touchstone management, if you read this, here are my questions for you:
When the staff demanded to see the texts, why didn’t you permit them to see it?
Your CEO claims “(1) no gym was ever directly threatened” and “(2) there was never an active shooter” as “fact.” Where’s the evidence to back those claims?
If "(3) the police didn’t deem this as a direct threat”, what’s your justification and evidence?
What did you as a company gain from keeping its doors open? Maintaining recurring revenue? Was recurring revenue worth the cost of a) people freezing their memberships and b) damaging trust with your staff and community?
Touchstone should have informed the staff and members on 10/22, the moment they learned about those texts.
The key point is that we have a right to know when threats are made and decide for ourselves what is safe for ourselves; the key point is that we deserve the reasonable security measures we have asked for; the key point is that, at the end of the day, our lives are inherently more valuable than a few days of business.
Workplaces have no right to take away people’s choice to decide what’s safe for them. They should give staff the information to help them choose for themselves, respecting that it's up to the staff, not the organization. They can frame the choice, and give information, but not decide for them.
Isn't this what climbing teaches us? That it's solely up to the climber to decide if doing it is safe? Why was this core principle around a sport we care deeply about taken out of the picture?
In solidarity with the Hollywood Boulders staff and the broader concerned Touchstone staff,
–tim
Donate to Hollywood Boulders staff here.
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Share the open letter.
If any staff member or member closer to this situation has context/information that would add to this article, or any corrections to anything stated here, please comment! Or email me here. I want to make sure everything here is accurate and best represents the staff’s POV.