Criminal Attack Plan Revisited

It's interesting to note that the latest attack in Charlotte i.e. The Bump and Rape/Rob attack followed the S.I.V.A pattern to a tee.

For those who don't remember I wrote about almost all criminals attacking according to the S.I.V.A. acronym which is Selection, Isolation, Verbal then Attack/Assault

First he selected his victim looking out for women alone in cars (in one case two women in one car) as they headed home from night clubs.

Secondly they isolated themselves when they left the club.

Third, he used the ploy of running into their cars the same way another criminal will use a verbal ruse to get close enough to launch his attack.

As I've mentioned previously you can avoid the latter part of the program if you are diligent enough with the first three.

Could you for example reduce the risk of being selected? Yep. Have a male in the car with you, have a pile of friends in the car, have NRA gun stickers on your vehicle or don't go clubbing until he's been caught. (If you have trouble finding a guy, there used to a company that sold a male mannequin for lone women drivers that you could put in the front passenger seat to create the impression there was a man on board).

Next...could you increase your awareness levels when you're on your own? You have to be hyper-vigilant any time you leave the safety of numbers.

As for the steps to take during the verbal phase (in this case the fake accident) see the previous blog entry.

If you do those three well enough you should never end up in the final phase having to fight your way out of a planned ambush by the bad guy(s) and that avoidance and awareness is what true self protection is all about.

SIVA

We've had a spate of people robbed while walking home from clubs and bars uptown recently, so, I thought I'd devote a couple of posts to how the bad guys select their victims.

The acronym we use is S.I.V.A. which I'll break down over the next four posts. This one will be devoted to S which stands for selection.

A study was done by Grayson and Stein a few decades ago in which they used prisoners who were human predators and showed them video footage of people walking. In prisons on both coasts the predators all picked the same victims within seven seconds of watching them walk. It didn't matter if they were male/female, big/small, tall/short, black/white, dressed well/badly or catholic or protestant.

The results found that gait was very important as the ideal victim tends to be tired, lacks confidence, walks too slow or too fast, shuffles and looks down instead of around.

One of the best ways to understand this is to adopt a predatory mindset and go out and pretend you're a crack addict looking for a victim to rob. Who would you pick? Why?

Who appears shy or vulnerable?
Who is intimidating?
Who is aware of their surroundings?
Who is distracted, alone or task fixated?
Who is reckless or having a great time?
Who else is watching?
Which people need other stimulus (alcohol, conflict, attention etc)

By looking at it from the enemy's viewpoint you'll better understand how to lower your own profile so you're unlikely to be one of the chosen ones.

Ok, next time we'll talk about the "I"