Crime and Awareness

[Mark Crnolatas]

*Note: I posted some of this on the thread on safety tips, but feel it is important enough to post it here.

Re: The rape at Warren and Madison, and Crime and Awareness in general

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, in 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 approx. 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, and cut you with it. That leaves an person with 1.5 seconds to recognize a threat, 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 continues to spread outward from the inner city. 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 that condition yet. Hopefully we can help to keep it from becoming similar to the areas closer to downtown Cleveland for example W.25 to W.110th, and preserve the Lakewood we've grown up in, or at least give it a concerted effort.

I've discussed a concept I had with Jim OB addressing what we, as residents, can do to help in this area last November, and it seems now is an appropriate time to make it a reality.
I'll handle that. More on that project soon.


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".