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Personal Safety Tips

Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2005 8:07 am
by Mark Crnolatas
While we do public speaking on safety and security, here are some tips that are floating around that are basic, but worth remembering. Some were given to me this morning, some I'll add.


1) The elbow is the strongest part of your body, if close enough, use it.
(Tae Kwon Do teaching)

2) If a robber demands your purse or wallet, don't hand it to him, throw it in the opposite direction of where you want to run. Chances are he wants it, and not you.

3) If the predator has a gun and you are not under his control, run and scream. The gunman will only hit a running target, 4 in a 100 times, and then not likely in a vital organ.

4) If put in the trunk of a car, kick out the tail light, stick you your arm, and wave like crazy. This has saved lives.

5) About getting into your car:
a: Be aware, look around you, into your car's front and back seats.

b: if you are parked next to a van, enter your car on the side away from the van. serial killers pull their victims into their vans when they try to get into their cars.

c: Watch out for a a male sitting alone in a vehicle next to your car.

d: If you get into your car, and notice a paper on the back window, don't get out to remove it. Drive off at once.

e: Don't sit in your car after shopping etc.; this enables a predator to get in your car and put a gun to your head. Get in your car, lock the doors and drive off.


6) Always take the elevator, never the stairs. Stairwells are perfect crime spots.

7) Being sympathetic may get you raped or killed. Serial killer Ted Bundy played on the sympathies of women; he walked with a cane or limp, and asked for help into his vehicle, then overpowered the helper.
(Remember the scene in "Silence of the Lambs" ? )

8.) Don't respond to baby's crying outside at night. Call the police. Police think serial killers have recorded a baby's crying and use it to lure women outside their homes at night.

9) When walking down a dimly lit street, walk in the center of the street, when possible. This gives you some time if a predator is lurking between parked cars.

10) Remember a credit card, a pencil, almost anything can be used as a self-defense weapon. Almost anything that hits a soft area of the body, such as the throat, facial area, or areas without much "meat" such as the wrist, shin, knee, with as much force as you can, will hurt even the largest of men.

11) Predators expect to be kicked in the groin. Men will guard against that. If you need to fight, go for the soft areas. Pull the ear. The ear will come off with only 3 pounds of force.

11b) If being choked, pull one thumb of your assailant away from your body. (Tae Kwon Do teaching)

12) If an unknown person comes to your door, don't open the door to speak to them. If it's a screen type door, even with glass, they'll hear you well enough.

Mark Allan (Crnolatas)
"A society or group of people exist soley in it's ability to maintain an atmosphere of peace and civility. It's failure is directly relative to the degree of the lack of these conditions".

Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2005 9:40 am
by Jerry Ritcey
d: If you get into your car, and notice a paper on the back window, don't get out to remove it. Drive off at once.


This is a bit of an urban legend:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_carjacking.htm

8.) Don't respond to baby's crying outside at night. Call the police. Police think serial killers have recorded a baby's crying and use it to lure women outside their homes at night.


This is also a known urban legend:
http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/crybaby.htm

Safety

Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2005 1:17 pm
by Mark Crnolatas
Correction: A gunman will only hit a running ZIG ZAGGING target 1 in 100 times.

Mark Allan (Crnolatas)
_______________________
"A society or group of people exist soley in it's ability to maintain an atmosphere of peace and civility. It's failure is directly relative to the degree of the lack of these conditions".

Good Advice

Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2005 1:35 pm
by Marty Hout
Apparently A woman was raped yesterday morning at about 3 am. She was abducted from the BP station at Warren and Madison and forced to drive behind the 5/3 Bank across the street and raped there. There's a lot of helpful information in this post that could thwart such an attack.

Tips

Posted: Wed Oct 19, 2005 8:31 am
by Mark Crnolatas
Unfortunately, it's our nature, here in the U.S., to be more reactionary, and less preventative. The people of Israel, for example, are the opposite. Their security measures are some of the best, in the world.

It's not that we don't have the potential. Our mentality is one of "it happens to the other guy/girl". There, it's "it has already happened to use though out history, therefore, we are preparing". I refer to them only in the aspect of their security awareness.

This rape brings up issues that we all need to open our eyes to. I've found over the years, it's one thing to know something intellectually, such as these tips, posted above. It's another, to actually mentally catalog them.

At one speaking engagement on security, on Cleveland's west side, a woman raised her hand and said " I think your trying to make us afraid. I'm not living my life being afraid of my own shadow."
That's the mentality that produces victims. There is a vast difference between awareness, and paranoia.

Our subconscious mind is what governs our instant responses. As a deer sees your headlights coming, it freezes and stands still. It hasn't a response to that occurrence, so it does nothing.
The human subconscious works in the same way. If you have prepared, and "trained", and have thought about "what would I do if..", then a surprise response will bring some action, hopefully useful.
If you have discounted everything, and your subconscious does not have any part of a solution to, for example, a man grabbing you trying to pull you into a van, then you'll do nothing.

This is why police officers must continuously train, and update techniques.

For example in a potential deadly situation, it takes 3 seconds for an average human to recognize a threat, and react to it. Remembering this time, an average person, can draw a knife, and cover 21 feet in a second and a half. That leaves an person with 1.5 seconds to recognize, make a decision to what degree to respond to the threat, and to act on the threat.

Obviously, in the police officer's case, he/she has to hope that response is the "right one" especially in the case of lethal force. This is why the job of a police officer here, or anywhere else carries the same necessity for mental and physical preparedness.

While it seems I drifted from the point of safety, I hope this pointed out some part of how the mind-set of security works, and that we actively feed our subconscious with something, rather than nothing.

Times are different. The criminal element spreads. One Cleveland police officer friend of mine stated "we don't solve the problems out here, all we can do is try to keep up in the race to hold it all back, and hope we win a few more rounds than the bad guys do".

Thankfully, our city isn't in condition yet. Hopefully we can help to keep it from becoming similar to the areas closer to downtown Cleveland.

Mark Allan (Crnolatas)
"A society or group of people exist soley in it's ability to maintain an atmosphere of peace and civility. It's failure is directly relative to the degree of the lack of these conditions".