A core component of self-protection is risk management and mitigation – whenever I do any form of consultancy, this is where I always start. I’ve written in more depth about what risk is, and how to define it. In short, risk is where assets, threats, and vulnerabilities intersect; e.g. where there are no threats and vulnerabilities, there is no risk to our assets (which can and does include us). It is virtually impossible to live in a world, or act and behave in such a way, that there is no risk; as soon as you leave your house, you become more vulnerable to attack – and the risk to your safety goes up - because you lack the protection of your home. One way to mitigate and manage this risk, is to never leave your house, but obviously that would be both an impractical and unhealthy solution to dealing with the risk, especially when there are other practical and simple ways to reduce vulnerabilities, and often the opportunity to limit your exposure to threats and dangers e.g. don’t go to a bad part of town late at night, etc.

One of my students relayed a story about a female friend of his, who believed somebody was following her. She approached a man on the street, and asked him if he would walk with her, until she got to her house. He refused. Amongst my student’s group of friends, there was a sense of moral outrage, about the man’s refusal to assist, and the emotional part of me agrees. However, the objective risk-mitigator/manager in me sees things differently. Obviously, those friends of the woman, knew that her story was genuine; that she felt she was in danger, and approached somebody whose presence would deter the person following her, to walk her home. To the person being approached, they have no idea what the back story to the incident is e.g. is the person following her an ex-partner who is jealous that she is seeing other people (and could be armed), is she part of a gang that is using her to lure targets/victims to a location where they will be mugged, abducted, etc? What are the risks, and the level of those risks, involved in walking this person home? And are we prepared to accept them, because the cost/risk to the person asking for assistance is potentially greater? Most of us, I believe, would accept these possibilities, to do what we would see as the “right thing”, but at the same time, we shouldn’t do this blindly, in case by doing so, we are putting ourselves in danger . We should gather more information.

We need to understand the “threat” portion of the assessment more fully, and we can gain more information concerning this, by asking questions e.g. does the person know the individual following them? If so what is their relationship? Where were they coming from, and when did they notice/realize that somebody was behind them? If it’s the crazy ex who saw her in a pub or bar, and has decided to follow her home and confront her about something – and he has a history of violence – walking her back to her house may not be the safest strategy for either of you; especially if she has just moved in order to avoid him knowing where she lives. Just because somebody asks for help, doesn’t mean that the help they are requesting is effective help. They could be making the situation worse for themselves, as well as you. In this scenario going to another place of safety, would be a better strategy. As part as your own personal self-protection planning, you should have safe places you can go to – apart from your home – when you find yourself having to deal with a threat. These can be friend’s houses, well populated places, police stations and hospitals, etc. If the woman you were trying to assist believed she was in imminent danger, there may be places of safety closer to you both than her house.

There is a terrible poster campaign running on Boston’s subway network. It is well intended, but poorly executed. It involves intervening on another person’s behalf, when they are having to deal with an aggressive individual. In it, a white man is shouting aggressively at a Muslim woman, who is sitting in a subway car. The poster advises that you should intervene, by going up to the woman, sitting next to her, and starting a conversation, about the weather, movies, etc. The misplaced belief is that the aggressor, who is now being ignored, will walk off frustrated. It’s a lovely idea, but ignoring someone who is emotional and angry will, in most cases, only escalate the situation. The poster was designed by a French artist – there is a reason I don’t give drawing lessons, and there is a reason why artists shouldn’t be given well-intended, but misplaced/misunderstood advice about de-escalation. When you accept a risk, such as intervening on somebody’s behalf, you need to make sure that you have the “tools” to do the job, or you may make the situation much, much worse, increasing the risk of violence, both to yourself and the person you are helping (I have written articles on more effective strategies for intervening in such situations – you can use the search box on www.kravmagablog.com, and type in the search term “intervening” to find them). Are you prepared for a violent confrontation, if/when the aggressor doesn’t walk away, but instead gets physical?

We can mitigate risk, by having the correct tools to deal with a situation. A large part of risk management is reducing our vulnerabilities – those things which a threat can exploit, either directly or indirectly. Often, our vulnerabilities come from ignorance and misguided advice about what violence is, and how we should handle it e.g. when we are in the presence of an aggressive individual we might think we should pretend to be on our phone, and that they will respect the social convention of not interrupting a conversation – a predatory individual who is looking to cause you physical harm, has already ignored perhaps the greatest social convention of all; being perceived as impolite is not going to deter them. Neither are they going to be deterred by the fact that somebody else might know where you are – they know that the assault will be over before any assistance can reach you.     

We may choose and believe that walking the woman home is an effective strategy, but as we gain more information about the situation, we should be flexible in taking it on board, and changing our strategies for dealing with it. Understanding what the threats and vulnerabilities are in a situation allows us to make informed and rational decisions, rather than emotional ones. Most of us want to do the right thing, and will accept a certain level of risk that comes with that, but there may be ways we can do this, while limiting both our vulnerabilities in the situation, along with those of the person(s) we are trying to help.