Tactics

JimConway

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Editor's Notebook: Tactics
by Rich Grassi
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Is his mind on his surroundings? Would it be difficult to rob this person?
I was recently privy to a conversation where the term "tactics" was said to be "all the stuff you tried to do when awareness, disengagement and skill at arms failed", or words to that effect. As this is the "tactical" wire, I thought it appropriate to examine the term and its use.

According to the internet dictionary, tactics is the "art or science of disposing military or naval forces for battle and maneuvering them in battle" and "any mode or procedure for gaining advantage or success." Strategy is "a plan, method or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining a specific goal or result."

Traditionally, tactics has been discussed as a cluster of behaviors that, when employed, gains success in battle. For us (as well as for nations) the best battle is the one seen in advance and avoided. If our tactics fail us there, our tactics in battle are designed to give us the victory.

I prefer to see tactics in degrees or stages. The first stage, macro-tactics, amounts to a way of life. We study the predator by viewing at every opportunity surveillance videos and photos of criminals just prior to and actually engaging in assaultive robbery behaviors. It comes from interviewing predators behind bars or reading studies of convicted felons giving us a look into their mindset. It's remarkably unchanged over decades.
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This is how we get ready? We know shooting is in the offing, note the ball cap, ear- and eye-pro!
Examine the potential victim, sizing him/her up. Look the area over for cops or Samaritans. Make your approach. You have to get in close. Distract, usually with a request for help, asking for the time, for a match. Wait for that moment of indecision, then rush in. Strike, order the money, watch, jewelry. Snatch the purse. Run to the area you've already reconnoitered. Get far enough out, check the score.

The best victim is self-engaged. Texting, talking on a cell phone is good. Walking, head down looking at the pavement, shoulders slumped is even better. Unawareness is sweet victory for the predator.

The macro-tactician knows this and weighs every stop, every stroll with potentials. Preparation doesn't end and goes along with that stage above unawareness, Yellow. In Yellow, the smart "victim" is actually a predator. You're looking for much of the same he does and you're looking to see who notices. Avoid places that attract victims; victims attract predators. Don't go "looking for trouble" - in the sense of having a chip on your shoulder. When you go, look for trouble so you can slip past unnoticed.

Over the years, I've gotten to see the ritual. Sometimes it was practiced on me. Once, I saw the panhandler a long time before he turned to start for me. It was so obvious, I'd seen it so many times. I couldn't see his partner though. Was he alone?

One "tactic" is the "one-plus" rule. It gets pretty extensive in a custodial situation but for here it suffices that, if you identify one potential threat you start looking for his partner. Like their counterparts in the animal kingdom, human predators often travel in packs.

As he got to the Dead Line - the closest point I would allow him, my non-gun hand went up. It looked like I was directing traffic and his lane was "Stop." I knew he'd speak, but he was late.

"Go ON!" I barked. "I can't help you!"

It was disgust on his face. He swore, got a word out.
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Have things changed since 1980? We do much the same to "prepare," but what are we preparing for?
"MOVE ON!"

He wasted no more time. A few acted like they noticed the exchange, but went back to the forage, wagging their tails like the others. He'd nail someone before the day was out.

Macro-tactics is planning, preparation and playing "what if?". Micro tactics covers the approach to a scene, contact if it's unavoidable, and disengagement.

For a very good look at this topic, check the blog Kitlear, Kilo India Tango, at http://kitlear.com/?p=420. The title is "Street Robberies and You." It's an extremely well-written piece and a good primer into the world around you.

It's your life. Being wary isn't wearying; it's seeing the world around you. That includes the beauty and the bad.
 
[h=1]Street Robberies And You.[/h]
Posted by Kit on Mar 11, 2012 in Blogging, Featured

[COLOR=#C55F9A !important]This thread by BurnedOutLEO on Arfcom has been making the rounds for the past few weeks. It’s a fantastic rundown on the criminal mindset of your average robber, as well as what you can do to prevent becoming a victim. I highly encourage folks to read it.[/COLOR]
. . . . .
Here’s my own story. In the fall of 2009 I got injured on duty and ended up hobbling around with a cane for a few months. I was under doctor’s orders to limit my walking and after a few months I had cabin fever pretty hardcore. I was so tired of having to ask my husband to do the simplest tasks for me. I just wanted to Get Out!On December 6, 2009, I decided I wanted to do one thing – go shopping. I had been unable to stay on my feet long enough to comfortably shop for more than an hour since August. I almost didn’t take a gun. I knew I’d likely be trying on clothes, and it’s such a hassle either keeping up with my Safepacker purse, or ensuring my traditional carry Glock 19 wouldn’t freak out the Christmas shoppers, or constantly clipping and unclipping my IWB Keltec P32 holster. But I settled on the Keltec, and just slipped it into a jacket pocket. At the last moment, I also grabbed my camera, remembering I wanted to snap some photos of the river with ice forming.I didn’t leave the house until after 2pm, so I knew I should do the pictures first because it would be dark by five, when I’d no doubt be done shopping. I didn’t want to walk too far to get to the best river photo spots, but I remembered there was a road hardly anyone but police and maintenance workers knew about that ran behind our local minor league baseball field that would take me nearly to the waterfront.When I pulled in, I noticed there was a newer model Honda-style car parked a little farther down, by the stadium dumpsters, and a guy not really dressed for the weather (it was 6 degrees and windy with CRAZY windchill) was moving around by the car. I figured he was either with maintenance, or raiding the dumpster, and I instinctually kept an eye on him.Sure enough, I barely got 50 feet from my pickup when he started heading over the rise toward me. The hair stood up on the back of my neck.In Gavin Debecker’s book, The Gift of Fear, he talks about how victims interviewed after being victimized start out saying “I don’t know why, but something felt wrong…” but if you drill down and get them to go into sharp detail, they can eventually name the series of details that led them to that intuition that told them FEAR THIS.At the time, I was thin slicing based on my prior experience predicting confrontational behavior, but now I can look back and point out all those details that sent my brain into red alert mode. I had my camera in my hands at waist-height and quickly held down the shutter while aiming in his direction.I couldn’t see it at the time, but when I looked at the photograph later I noticed he was looking at me. Sizing me up.
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I slipped a hand into my pocket and unholstered the Keltec and kept it in my hand, in my pocket. He put his hands in his pockets, hunched over, and turned as though he was just going to walk ahead of me on the trail, took a couple of steps, then rapidly did a 180 and headed straight toward me. I immediately stood still to maintain some distance.Before I could say anything, he said, “do you have a car?” I used my best command voice and barked, “get your hands out of your pockets and keep them where I can see them.”He immediately did, and also stopped in his tracks. “I’m not a robber,” he said. I identified myself as a police officer and asked him what he wanted.He said he wanted a jump start. That he was homeless, parked behind the baseball field last night, fell asleep with the heater and dome light on, and now his battery was dead.I weighed my feelings of wanting to help him (if in fact he was being honest) against my concern for my personal safety. My safety won out. Nobody knew where I was. The noise of the river would’ve covered any yelling or screaming. He had an easy two-mile drive to the interstate off-ramp and out of Montana. It was not a heavily traveled area, especially on a 6-degree Sunday outside of baseball season. Even if I made sure he was unarmed, he was still stronger than me, I was still injured, and I didn’t want to give him the opportunity to think up a way to get the jump on me during a 10-minute jump start fiasco. I told him I’d happily call him a tow for a jump. He said he didn’t have money for that. He was sober, didn’t look strung out, and I asked him why he wasn’t staying at our local homeless shelter (you can stay there for 30 days if you’re sober). He said he’d stayed there one night but didn’t like the people there.I told him I couldn’t help him, and suggested he walk to the shelter (about two miles walk) and see if they could. He said “I guess I’ll go see if I can make a friend.”I watched him leave.When he was pretty far down the trail, I took my river photos, keeping an eye out in case he came back. Inside I was conflicted, wondering if I’d handled that correctly. It was a pretty freaking cold day. He was sober. He had a newer car and didn’t appear to have been homeless for too long. It was a few weeks from Christmas – where was my Christian charity? I kept mulling it over as I got back in my pickup and headed toward my shopping destination.Finally I had an idea – I’d leave twenty bucks and a note tucked into his driver’s side door. That way if he couldn’t find a free jump start maybe he could offer someone money to do it. If I’d been thinking of more than just my safety, I earlier could’ve offered to call a tow company, paid for the jump over the phone, and left him there to wait for the tow driver. I didn’t think it was wrong to allow my safety concerns to keep me from problem-solving his little crisis on the spot. But giving him some cash seemed like a good compromise for my conscience, especially since I had only been gone for a few minutes and knew he couldn’t possibly have walked across the river to the shelter and back yet.I drove back to the baseball field.His car was gone.
. . . . .
Now, there’s no way he made it across the river, found someone to jump his car, got back, jumped it, and got out of there in those 20 or so minutes I was gone.In the Street Robberies And You post, BurnedOutLEO touches on verbal cues. I believe the reason the man said “I’m not a robber” is precisely because he was a robber. Robbery was in the forefront of his mind. It was all he could think about, so much so that when I got inside hisOODA loop by acting contrary to what a 5’03″ 115-pound potential female victim should act like, all he could do was voice what was on his mind in the most innocuous of stumbling words.I never took my gun out of my pocket or even told him I had one. But the way my gun hand went into my pocket the moment he turned would’ve given him a strong nonverbal cue. My tone of voice was another cue. And I identified myself as a police officer – primarily to make him think twice about what other abilities or resources I might have, but secondarily because it would be useful if it turned out I had to defend myself. After all, what kind of person attacks someone they know is a police officer? Answer: a much more hardened criminal.You don’t have to be a police officer to “fail the victim interview.” Here’s what you can do:
1. Be situationally aware. If you have your earbuds in or you’re constantly looking down at a text screen, you’ll never see him coming.
2. Recognize when you have a hinky feeling and listen to it.
3. Practice positive visualization. Police officers do this every day as they mentally rehearse possibilities of what will happen and how they will react when they respond to a call. If you’re walking down the street, think “what would I do if I were mugged right now?” Think about several ways to handle it. In your mind, you should “win” every encounter.
4. Distract, then act. I distracted this guy by giving him a command in a command voice, essentially taking control of the encounter. You can throw your keys or coffee and run. Whatever works for you. You’ll have thought of some ideas for distractions during your positive visualization exercises. Use them.
5. Be armed. In photography they say the best camera is the one you have with you when you see the perfect photographic moment appear. I feel the same way about guns. People might make fun of your for your little North American Arms pocket .22, but it’s better than nothing. If your Glock 19 is so heavy and hard to conceal that you leave it at home all the time, it’s not doing you much good. Even pepper spray is better than nothing.
6. Don’t go stupid places, with stupid people, or do stupid things. A deserted trail behind a baseball field is not a great place to be. That day I decided to go anyway because it was broad daylight. But the moment I saw that car and that man I should’ve put my pickup in reverse and left. Listen to your fear. It’s telling you something your Lizard Brain really really wants you to hear.
. . . . .Now, I don’t know if he gave up, came back and found his battery not dead after all…. or if it was never dead in the first place and he had selected me as a victim, then got caught off guard when I didn’t act like one. I don’t know what was really the deal there, and I’ll never know.But I was glad I took my gun shopping that day.
 
Nice article.

I had an experience where all I had was a 4 D-cell Mag-lite and my charming disposition but I walked away with the same question that woman had, "I wonder what they were really up to?" It's just an amateur opinion, but I believe that if you "do the right things", this is the feeling you should be left with.
 
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