Case Study: Mugging without weapons

[punisher73]

No matter how good you are you can't be at full attention all the time. You don't have eyes in the back of your head or Peter Parker's Patented Spider Sense. You can lengthen the odds. You can't eliminate them.

"His attention wavered for a moment. Never let that happen to you!"
"He wasn't constantly whirling around scanning every corner of the room in a defensive crouch!"
"How can we make ourselves absolutely safe from everyone who comes within twenty five feet of us?"

You take the measures that decrease your own reasonable risk as far as you reasonably believe they need to be. Past that there's not much you can do.

Those were along the lines that I was thinking.

To me, and my definitions. I think "armchair quarterbacking" and learning from an incident are two different things. Some of the earlier posts (could have been my mood yesterday) almost read like it wouldn't have happened to them. My point was like Tellner's, there is only so much you can do, and things still happen.

I agree awareness is probably over 90% of avoidance in the first place. But, some people were talking about the attacker saying something to the victim and then the victim turning away totally oblivious. Listen to the victim's statement, there were no words or anything said beforehand. There were no prior clues other than two people walking in at the same time.

 

[tellner]

There was a mugger in downtown Portland a few summers ago who really freaked out the police. His MO was simple. He hid in dark, recessed old doorways. When victims walked by he reached out, pulled them in from behind, hit them hard in the jaw a few times, whacked their heads against the concrete, took wallet or purse and walked away. Nobody gave any kind of coherent description.

There was no conversation, no interaction and no eye contact. He didn't use a weapon or intimidate. It was just snatch, smash, grab and leave. The general Received Wisdom on the part of the police was that there wasn't much a person could do about it except walk closer to the street.

This was one smart hardworking mugger. He was also smart enough to get out while the getting was good. Right around the time the first news stories circulated he quit abruptly. Maybe he explored other business opportunities. Maybe he left town. Maybe he stepped in front of a beer truck. I'm guessing he realized he had a good thing but there was no percentage in continuing.

It's a good thing that most thugs aren't as smart or rational about their jobs.

 

[Ahriman]

Now THAT'S an effective, prepared method. Unless you train to endure punches to the face, minimal chance to avoid. Lucky for the victims he didn't want to kill, for he could've done that with equal ease.
Only chance is if it's not totally dark. I always check doorways, but some are almost literally black as a black hole... :S
Such things are what we teach when it comes to offensive work. And efficiency of such things is the reason why we filter who we teach.

 

[Deaf Smith]

tellner,

Maybe he became a 'victim' himself of poor victim selection in another town. That is, he finaly goofed and someone offed him when he tried to do his mugging (we can always hope you know.)

Out of the blue smash-n-run muggers and murderers are rare thankfully. Most muggers are just to despirate to cook up a routine like that. It takes a real cold person to just go around bashing people for their wallets. And most murderers in some way know their victim.

Deaf

 

[arnisador]

Awareness would have made a huge difference here. Perhaps the person was looking away for some reason--shyness--but you have to keep your eyes open and be ready to move.

 

[joeygil]

Well, if I were in that situation...I'd probably get punched. Too much ADD to keep decent situational awareness. Hopefully, I've taken enough hits that it wouldn't take me out completely. But as my guro says, "When your a black belt, and take a good punch to the head, you're suddenly a brown belt." And so on.


Anyway, the thing that disturbs me most are the racist comments on YouTube.