Situational Awareness in a Bad Situation
Three videos you can watch and teach tonight on situational awareness. Awareness Drill The Advantage an Attacker Always Has What is a Soft Target?
By Willie “The Bam” Johnson
It’s the first of the month in the tough ghetto neighborhood. It’s payday for the poor.
The welfare checks have arrived, and the drug dealers can’t wait. It’s also their payday. They can easily estimate between $20,000 and $50,000 on the day alone.
This might seem exaggerated, but it’s not. This happens every day, and with this business comes violence, guns, and murder for those in top positions of power. There was a time when such events were going on only in the inner city.
Nowadays, they could be happening anywhere—on the job, in school, at the playground, to name just a few places. People who run these operations know that there are people who are out to get them.
They tend to use neighborhood buildings for external protection and find weak people needing money to serve as their lookouts. I lived in a high-rise building in Baltimore City’s Lafayette project for most of my childhood. It felt like a jail until I was sent to prison.
There were 12 flights of stairs, with fences and bars in the outer hallways of each floor. Busted-out lights made the stairwells dark, and sometimes the railings were covered with feces left by pranksters who thought it funny when others would run through, grab the railings, and get it all over them.
The stench of urine resonated throughout the stairwells, and graffiti containing vulgar curse words covered the walls.
The elevators often were broken or stuck between floors by kids who would ride them and stop them between floors to get high. Drug dealers used these buildings as fortresses against law enforcement.
They have a street code that shields dealers from suspicious people.
Dealers only meet with loyal customers and people loyal to them.
Law enforcement could not control the illegal businesses operating here or the murders associated with them. To me, the environment felt like a padded mental asylum.
Because these types of criminal activity have extended beyond the urban areas, today’s youth must be taught at an early age to recognize and avoid suspicious environments.
Even the youngest of children should be taught to be aware of their surroundings to avoid being victimized through violent and sexual acts that rob them of their very essence as individuals.
The consequences of such tragedies negatively affect their transformation into adolescence and adulthood, resulting in serious mental and emotional issues.
- Teach them to be on the lookout for crowds of people with abscesses, puffy paranoid eyes, and skinny bodies.
- Stay away from places where crowds travel in and out each day, loitering and speaking street slang in rhythmic inflections but in tones that you don’t understand.
- Avoid sharp dressing, slick-talking individuals driving fancy cars, and wearing lots of expensive jewelry in places where there’s constant traffic in and out at all hours of the day and night.
- Parents should start talking to their children early on about protecting themselves from being assaulted, accosted, or kidnapped by an unknown adult.
- These conversations should continue as they grow and mature. Tell them that a vigilant mind keeps danger at bay, and encourage them to pay attention to the smallest of details.
- Teach children to stay in areas that are well-lit and not to talk to strangers or to accept rides from strangers.
- Teach them never to accept money, toys, candy, or other gifts without asking their parents first.
- Have them memorize their addresses and phone numbers and the phone number of a close friend or relative.
- Be sure that they know about improper touching, and teach them to tell their parents immediately if someone touches them inappropriately.
- Tell them never to answer the door when they are home alone and never to tell anyone on the phone that they are home alone.
- Advise children to always tell a caller that the adult at home is unable to come to the phone but will call back and try to get a name and phone number.
- Teach children to find a store clerk or other adult, ideally a mom with children, to help out if they should get lost in a public place and to never leave the environment.
- Children should always inform parents where they will be and with whom and go straight to their destinations with friends or relatives so that they are not alone en route.
- Teach children to immediately run away, yelling loudly, if they are verbally attacked or threatened with physical violence.
- If they are physically attacked—grabbed, picked up, or touched in any sexually inappropriate or violent way—they should yell or scream out loud and try to attract attention in any way possible to get someone to help. They should kick, punch, get away, and run if at all possible.
They may not be able to defeat a motivated abductor high on crack but they can fight their way out of a bad situation by not being there and if they are, making it hard for the abductor to succeed.