Good talk on blocks

[Van Canna]

"It's a great time to be a criminal," he said as he cruised the parking lot, eyeing the GPS units that people had left on their dashboards. Pointing to one unit in particular, he said, "If we were bad guys right now, we'd jump out and grab that baby. There's nobody out here. Nobody would ever know we broke into that car."


He said shoppers need to be smart and that there is only so much the police can do. On the busiest shopping days of the year, the Burlington Mall feels bigger than the town itself. And with the crowds, police officers say, there will be some nasty days ahead.


The low point will come around mid-December, said Sergeant Mike McDade, when people really start to feel the pressure of buying presents for their loved ones.


Then there will be anger and maybe some fighting, shouting, and perhaps a little crying. In more than a decade of keeping the peace at the mall, McDade has seen just about everything.


"I've had at least a half dozen times over the last 14 years when people would break down and cry, telling me how stressed they are and how they can't handle it," he said. "I always tell them to take a breather before heading into the stores."

[Van Canna]

f.Channell »

Not to mention all the pedophiles walking around.

Shop online. Avoid those places.

Fred

[Van Canna]

TSDguy »

I had some huge guy that told me he just got out of prison _try to shake me down for 20 bucks on a cross street next to Washington Street (busy shopping area of Boston.) He did not get it, and I quickly got back on the main street. So much for shortcuts!


Milk Street. We were trying to avoid the crowds on Washington by taking whatever that parallel street is.

Not to brag or anything, but I've always thought I'm extremely good at reading body language or judging people's actual intents, so this guy caught me by surprise.

He started by asking me if I knew Boston well, and being near Quincy Market, I expected it. I stopped thinking I was giving directions, but he had only asked to get me to stop.

He started in on a nonsensical story about why he needed money, how he was fresh out of prison (he looked it, he clearly lifted weights a LOT), and I said "sorry can't help ya" and turned to leave.

He started getting whiney and persistent, while following us. It was sort of odd to keep him sideways to me instead of my back to him (I was completely expecting a sucker punch, if not a knife at this point), in between him and my wife, and still walk away.

He got semi-violent; was swearing loudly at us and punching the air. I took my wife through some traffic so that he would stop following.

We headed straight for the crowds on Washington and soon we were far enough away in a big enough crowd he couldn't have continued following if he'd tried harder.

TSDguy

[Van Canna]

Kuma-de »

Let's not forget that home grown Islamic radicals have been making threats to hit a mall in the USA during Christmastime.

Jim Prouty
New England Budo Center

[Van Canna]

Malls really a prime target during Holiday season for terror attacks and shooters.

[Van Canna]

Self consciousness. People who are carrying for the first time…or uncomfortable with carrying tend to be very gun sensitive. They constantly check and adjust and walk with a strange gait, constantly looking for someone looking at them. That is noticeable to those who are looking.

Suarez

[Van Canna]

It is my contention that if sleeping for one sleep period or even two, helps an officer have better recall of the incident, how much more is it necessary for us ordinary folk?

Taking the tip from paragraph six here, we can give enough brief information for the investigation to get underway, but then we should clam up and ask for a lawyer to be present.

If someone implies that only the guilty need a lawyer, inform them that you are just too shaken up and highly stressed out to talk and you need your lawyer’s advice. Then be quiet. You must take the time to allow your heart rate to reduce, your emotions to quiet and your mind to settle.

Your lawyer can instruct the police that you are quite willing to cooperate when you feel more emotionally balanced, and will return to give a statement within the next 48 hours.

If you are held in custody, it may be hard, but sleep is your most important survival tactic at this time.

And all this is especially relevant if you justifiably defended yourself from a life threatening attack.

[Van Canna]

During high levels of SNS (Sympathetic Nervous System) excitement, however, cortisol is released at higher levels. A release of too much cortisol can lead to individual neuron binding, resulting in a burning of the nerve cell.

This results in the hippocampus’ inability to organize the components of a survival stress event into a whole memory unit (Ratey, 2001). Thus, memory will be fragmented, especially within the first 72 hours.”

It is this report that punches up the time required for complete memory integration and recall to as high as 72 hours.

Instruct your lawyer to get you as much time as he can (you may not be able to get into REM sleep for a night or two) to help with memory integration.

It may be necessary to provide him with copies of these articles to get him to pay attention, perhaps by giving him the url for defendyourself101.ca <hint, hint>.

Also, the line in paragraph 1. “...officers reported a triggering event assisted in the memory of the event, the most significant being a visual trigger,” refers to walking through the scene of the attack and going over the details in sequence.

While the lawyer is invaluable in instructing you on fine points of the law and how to speak to the investigating detectives, his most important role may just be helping you to get some sleep.

Ted Truscott

[Van Canna]

The police will bring lots of pressure to bear as it is their job is to get information as quickly as possible, even as they themselves have been trained not to make any statements to anyone under similar circumstances. They will be ‘nice’ to you_ and they will be nasty to you with threats and intimidation to make you talk.

A person who has been traumatized by being involved in an accident, a fatality on the highway, an assault that required defensive use of force by empty hands and or weapons _ is under a tremendous pressure to talk instinctively and try to convince that none of what happened was his fault.

The brain cannot think logically at that moment and he will experience logorrhea, as per the lethal force institute teachings_

Logorrhea= compulsive talking to exculpate without even realizing it.


1) Your primal response is one of, “That guy just tried to kill me but I’m still alive! I must have done something right! “ and

2) The “official” response to your life-preserving action is, “Get on the ground, scumbag! You’re under arrest!” and

3) The tool you just used to preserve your very life, and now have a fond regard for, is forcibly removed from you; you’re, not gently, physically restrained and handcuffed, then cruelly isolated by being tossed into a filthy cage intended for predatory criminals,

with no contact with any compassionate individual who could calm and comfort you, a form of torture for the specific purpose to psychologically defeat you when you’re at your lowest emotional point, impersonally “grilling” you, thereby fostering further doubt and insidiously “planting” their version of events which your information-starved brain regurgitates and solidifies

-permanently, through confabulation, so real you’ll pass a lie-detector test about it -into the “real” way it happened.

Your immediate body reactions may include: trembling, sweating, chills, hyperventilation, dizziness, jumpiness, hyperactivity, thirstiness, upset stomach, nausea, diarrhea, constant urge to urinate, sleep disturbance and nightmares.


Your long-term reaction may be a preoccupation with the event, reliving it over and over, second-guessing yourself, the feeling that you must have done something wrong, to the point where it metamorphosises into your shadow, always with you:

to experience irritability, loss of ability to function, outbreaks of rage, loss of ability to eat and sleep, tremors, sweats, nightmares, clinical depression, possibly even to the point of suicide, sexual dysfunction including impotence, flashbacks, inability to control your emotions, or other symptoms, such as survivor guilt, the “mark of Cain syndrome” (everyone knows what I’ve done),


social withdrawal, ostracization, the feeling that “nobody else understands,” disorientation, confusion, inability to concentrate and exaggerated startle response; but if you’ve trained properly and mentally prepared yourself in advance with a dedicated, close-knit team of reassuring friends and relatives who understand and agree with your point of view, then your psychic cost can be lowered.

[Van Canna]

[People in crisis who have just survived near-death experiences are notoriously incapable of making articulate statements that clearly explain what has happened and why it happened. The more we can keep a lid on logorrhea, the better off we are in the aftermath of these incidents, and the better the truth of the investigation will be served.]

[Van Canna]

The Misunderstood Explanation

Immediately after a situation you try to explain what happened by giving the whole story and then you stop when you realize what had happened actually sinks in. The explanation isn’t complete and the wrong information is then assumed to be the answer cause you freeze up , or zone out is the word commonly used.

Words of Hate

Words slipping out by accident after a situation will cause problems as well.
An example would be you are highly excited and after you shoot someone, let’s say he was a black man, you say something similar to “Black Bastard”. Those words will be used as a hate crime incident.

Words of Others

Some one who witnesses the incident makes a comment like “Die #####” or something similar. This could be used in your court case if it goes that far. And might even be said to have come from you by another witness who didn’t really know where it came from.

[Van Canna]

In an encounter, you may have some good reason to need to leave the scene of the incident. You may need to call for police or ambulance, etc.
Make this vocal and do it immediately don’t put it off. Then return just as immediately.

[Van Canna]

Concept of Mens Rea.

A person should not be convicted of a crime if he did not have mens rea. From the Latin, mens rea means “guilty mind.” It is the element of intent to commit a crime, or a level of negligence so gross that it rises to a culpable standard.


The problem comes in when the actions of a person who did nothing wrong, but fled the scene out of panic or ignorance , are taken as guilt-ridden, punishment-evading actions.

Why they flee
There is a wide perception that the criminal justice system is unfair. The point is: If someone believes they will be dealt with unfairly, they will avoid the process.

It is a principle of law in this country that the defendant should be judged by the standard of what a reasonable and prudent person would have believed, had they been in exactly the same situation as the defendant, and known exactly what the defendant knew at the time he took the action for which he is now being judged.

[Van Canna]

If a given armed citizen has had no formal training in dealing the with the aftermath of a armed encounter, his only role model is the entertainment media.

That source has implicitly told him that the protocol is to shoot the bad guy and then ride off into the sunset. We do what we are programmed to do.

There are other factors involved.

With some justification, the public fears the legal system. No one wants to be arrested and taken into a police station with their head down and TV cameras in their face.

No One wants to be sent to the poorhouse by huge legal fees to defend an act they know was proper. Many factors are at work when an honest, law-abiding citizen makes the foolish decision to leave the shooting scene.

In reading this stuff we come to realize that it can happen to any of us practicing martial artists, win or loose an encounter, empty handed or armed.

And a good majority of martial arts practitioners do have some sort of weapon on them, including firearms...which in itself is a good thing from a safety standpoint...but a bad thing if you do carry a firearm but have not been trained by lethal force trainers in its deployment and aftermath of a defensive shooting.

[Van Canna]

Example:

It seems that a client is a law-abiding armed citizen, licensed to carry a gun , and armed with the concealed handgun he goes about his errands on the day in question.

The client experiences a road rage incident.

The out of control motorist forces the client off the road and approaches his vehicle with a tire iron in his hand.
The client draws his gun, takes the attacker at gunpoint and orders him to halt.

The offender stops in his tracks and then heads back to his vehicle muttering obscenities. He throws the tire tool into his vehicle and drives off.

The threat is over. The client, breathing a sigh of relief, holsters his gun, and then continues about his business.

Meanwhile, the attacker does not appreciate the role reversal he has experienced.

He goes to a phone, describes the client and his vehicle , and tells the police that this man pointed a gun at him for nothing.
The client is subsequently arrested and charged with the serious felony of Aggravated Assault.

In your eyes, in mine and certainly in the eyes of the client, he simply went about his business after the armed incident had ended.

However , in the eyes of the criminal justice system, “he has fled the scene.” Now , the whole “flight equals guilt” presumption kicks in.

What happened in this case is the single most common aftermath error I see made by armed citizens who otherwise handle things correctly.

The huge majority of incidents in which armed citizens draw guns on criminals end in just this way.

The suspect flees, no blood is shed, and the citizen sees this as the conclusion to the drama.