Identifying various components that define situations in self defence and personal safety perspectives
Location
Where does the incident occur on the street, in a car park, in your home?
Relationship
Is the aggressor a stranger, a friend or a family member?
The criminal’s motive
Does the criminal want money, sexually motive?
Your state of mind of preparedness
Third parties who are with you friend, family members including children
Some scenario factors that may be taken in to consideration.
Two variables that are most interconnected are location and relationship.
If an assault is committed by a stranger, location is more important than the relationship with the attacker has with the victim.
Many people over estimate the importance of location when someone has been assaulted or Killed in their home, everyone who shares similar traits such as age and gender, and who lives in the same area, automatically assume that they are at risk and it was simply by chance and luck that it wasn’t them who was assaulted. This is not automatically the case; if the assailant and the victim had a prior relationship, then the location becomes less important; it is just the place where the assault takes place. However where stranger violence occurs, location becomes a defining factor.
A location
has certain attributes that make it a place of choice for violence to occur. It has to have Crime Attractors, what brings a violent criminal to a particular location.
A mugger
is going to be attracted to an area which has a good supply of rich victims, forget deserted alleyways etc. these places by definition are deserted and have no potential victims in them such as cash machines, Shopping Centres and Parking Areas.
However, there may well be locations that although attractive to certain criminals, have a number of Crime Preventers, which dissuade them from operating in these seemingly attractive locations.
Shopping centres may at first glance appear to be an area which supplies a good number of potential victims, but if it has a good CCTV then a mugger may decide that the risk of getting caught is too high and may choose to find a better location.
Certain locations may have factors in them, which promote crime. An attractive area that has certain features will score higher on a criminal’s radar than other attractive areas. One of the main things a criminal looks for is good escape routes burglars are much more likely to break in to a corner house, which is located on two roads, than a house in a cul-de-sac where there is only one way in and out. Muggers work to a similar protocol, choosing locations with a variety of escape routes. Muggers will also look for areas, where people either have to slow down or stop such as using crossing points on roads. You are more at risk when you are static, than you are when moving. Areas which has surveillance are also less likely to be crime hotspots than those which don’t; a parked car in a car park near the entrance, where there is a lot of traffic is less likely to be broken into, than one parked in a more remote spot even if it is better lit.
Many cities’ crime hotspots are located in its less affluent towns and there are a variety of reasons. Most street crime such as muggings and robberies, are committed by those individuals looking for immediate cash, not credit cards or jewellery these items need to be converted into cash and this requires time something that most muggers don’t have especially if they are committing robberies in order to support a drug habit. Poorer neighborhoods are likely to contain people with bad credit, who don’t use credit cards, but may have cash lying around their home. If you are in a location where there is Check Cashing businesses, pawn shops and similar, you are in an area where people are more likely to use cash than credit cards and this makes it more attractive locations for muggers than a more rich location.
We don’t always have control over the places we find ourselves in. we may live in a location that suffers from high crime rates, or work in one. We cannot always avoid being in areas that are attractive to certain criminals however when we understand those things which promote crime and those which prevent it, we may be able to change our behavior and the routes we chose to take when going through these locations.
South West Krav Maga -Oxford Kennie Gould
