Peak Design Still Facing Social Media Backlash Related to Luigi Mangione Investigation
A week after Luigi Mangione was arrested and charged for the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive officer Brian Thompson, Peak Design’s CEO Peter Dering continues to face social media backlash and threats.
Dering was first criticized by some while the search for the gunman was still on. He informed The New York Times that he had contacted the New York Police Department’s tip line, after several people had texted him that the shooter appeared to be wearing a Peak Design backpack in surveillance images that had been released to the public. A few days after the Dec. 4 shooting, a gray version of the brand’s Everyday backpack — that was filled with Monopoly money — was found by investigators in Central Park.
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Aside from being labeled a “snitch,” Dering has had his personal address and phone number shared online. Dering did not to respond to a media request Monday morning. A spokesperson for Peak Design said the entire Peak Design team is taking these threats “seriously,” and declined to disclose or say anything further at this time.
The spokesperson also did not say whether Peak Design plans to temporarily close its stores in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. A voice recording in the New York store on Lafayette Street said that calls were not being answered at this time.
Prior to the manhunt that led to the arrest of 26-year-old Mangione, Peak Design was a relatively unknown manufacturer and resource for well-designed, functional outdoor gear that Dering started in 2011. The Everyday backpack that was found in Central Park was reportedly believed to have been purchased between 2016 and 2019. Similar styles are still available on Peak Design’s site, with retail prices between $280 and $325.
The early-morning shooting of Thompson prompted some corporations to remove online photographs of their senior executives and to inquire about hiring personal security. As of April, 24 percent of Fortune 500 companies provided personal security to their CEOs and 16 percent provided security to other senior executives, according to a study by risk management consultancy WTW.
Edward Segal, author of the book “Crisis Ahead: 101 Ways to Prepare for and Bounce Back From Disasters, Scandals and Other Emergencies,” said, “With every day that passes, [due to] the outrageous behavior of people, the tribal nature of politics and social media, corporate executives — whether at large companies or small — have to be incredibly careful about what they say, when and how they say it, who they say it to and how it’s picked up. Things are not as safe as they used to be to provide information. What people pick up on social media — whether it’s true or not — can have a devastating and sometimes deadly backlash for the people who provide that information.”
While “that is not to say they should not come forward, if they know something that is important to law enforcement,” Segal said, “they and law enforcement need to take extra steps to protect the confidentiality and the identity” of those who do come forward.
In response to the controversy, Dering posted a statement Friday highlighting the company’s stance on consumer privacy. The executive noted an Everyday Backpack made by Peak Design was worn during the shooting. “Some of you have asked what our policies are around customer privacy, so I wanted to lay that out,” Dering wrote. “Peak Design has not provided customer information to the police and would only do so under the order of a subpoena.”
He also noted that the company cannot associate a product serial number with a customer unless a customer has voluntarily registered their product on the site. The CEO explained that serializing products allows the company “to track product issues and in some cases quarantine stock if a defect is found.”
He also made the distinction that serial numbers on Peak Design’s V1 Everyday backpacks were not “unique or identifying,” but they were lot numbers used to track batch production units. (The V1 model was phased out in 2019.) The company did not implement unique serial numbers until V2 iterations of its Everyday backpacks were introduced. Dering said if consumers do choose to register a Peak Design product and it is lost or stolen, they can reach out to the customer service team to have their registration erased, so the bag is not traceable back to them.
John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor David Kennedy said the notion of snitching comes out of dedicated criminal circles, where someone, who has engaged in a criminal act with others, gives up a criminal colleague to protect themselves when the authorities come knocking on their door. He said that the notion that a member of the public acting in good faith to cooperate with authorities to try to solve a heinous crime, including “quite possibly preventing future ones by someone, who may be inclined and in a position to do so — that that kind of coming forward for public safety is snitching is an entirely debased idea of what snitching is.”
Kennedy added, “In this age of social media, people feel they can weigh in on anything that crosses their minds. When anything high-profile happens, people are going to line up on different sides and they are going to make themselves heard. There isn’t any reason to think in any one of those situations that the more extreme expressions in public are more representative of public opinion.”
Avaans Media cofounder Tara Coomans, who deals with crisis management with clients, described Dering’s wading into the situation publicly as “a little bit of a disaster by their own making — and by their own CEO.” She described Dering’s most recent statement as “clear and concise,” and suggested it is “not going to stop speculation at this stage” because it has gone on for a while now. “At this point, they’ve said what they’re going to say. And they probably need to leave it at that,” she said, “In general, when you’re talking about a crisis like this, you can’t continue to feed the flames by making more and more statements.”
She added, “This highlights why an internal crisis plan is so important and PR needs to be integrated into the C-suite.”
As for whether the Peak Design controversy could deter others from sharing information, Barb Bergin, CEO of Crime Stoppers USA, said, “I certainly hope this would not discourage anybody. If you have any information, I would encourage you to call it in whether that be to the police or through an anonymous source like Crime Stoppers. We all have an obligation to be part of the solution in solving some of these crimes.”
Keeping people’s identities anonymous is the number-one priority for Crime Stoppers USA, she said. “At the end of the day, if any of us has a loved one who has been harmed or the victim of a crime, we would want anybody to come forward to help solve a case.”
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